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2
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Enclo. No. 3.
my opinion indicates a lack of appreciation of the financial position of the Colony and of the consequent necessity of reducing the burden which would now be imposed on it by the conversion of sterling salaries at the full rate of exchange.
5. Many of the suggestions contained in the Memorial are, as Your Lordship is aware, already under active consideration, notably the obtaining of expert opinion on the currency question and the imposition of fresh taxation on a basis that will accord more closely with the existing value of silver.
6.
I am also unable to consider it
advisable at present that the Assessment Tax
should be still further increased for such a
purpose as improving the lot of the sterling paid officers, if only for the reason that such a course would tend to increase the cost of living even above its present scale.
7. The seventeenth paragraph of the Memorial appears to me to be pre-eminently fallacious, as for many years these officers have been paid locally at a fictitious rate of
exchange, though this has hitherto been to their advantage.
8.. I enclose for Your Lordship's
▼
information a press cutting which reports the
speeches
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