26
scale of salaries. It is proper that
in a Service, which purports to provide
a permanent career, officers should be able
to look forward to reasonable prospects of
promotion. But the obligations of the
Government do not extend beyond the
provision of such prospects(which
may it must be
recalled in the case of officers in the
Colonial Service are not confined to a single
Colony and no officer can be held to have
a claim as of right to the maintenance of any
particular salary scale for a post which he
does not hold. There are indeed objections
of principle to recognising any such claim,
and obvious administrative difficulties in
the way of retaining for an indefinite period
two salary scales for officers performing
identical functions, the more favourable being
whose mby
reserved for officers who-have-no special claim
is
to preferential treatment other than that they
were in the Hong Kong Service when the change
was made.
4.