1841-1886
HER MAJESTY'S COLONIAL POSSESSIONS.
611
235
HONG KONG.
No. 23.
Governor Sir J. POPE HENNESSY, K.C.M.G., to the Right Hon.
MY LORD,
the EARL OF KIMBERLEY.
Government House, Hong Kong,
April 29, 1881.
1. I SUGGESTED two years ago that the financial statement in my Despatch of the 29th of November 1877 might be taken as the report on the Blue Book, but it is now probably more convenient to deal with the past few years under the principal heads specified in the annual returns. Those returns are arranged in the Blue Book under 33 headings, of which the first seven relate to finance. The others are concerned with public works, legislation, census returns, education, commerce, shipping, and industrial resources, gaols and criminal statistics, benevolent and religious institutions.
Finance.
2. A few weeks after I had assumed the Government of Hong Kong the finance returns of the preceding year (1876) were put before me by the Auditor General. The Revenue was certified to be 184,405l, and the Expenditure 187,569l. The fact that the Expenditure showed a disposition to run ahead of the Revenue was not owing to any want of care on the part of my predecessor, but to the circumstance that some of the monthly requisitions in the Survey Department, which the Governor had sanctioned, had been subsequently exceeded without previous authority. The attention of Heads of Departments having been called to the necessity of adhering to the Treasury instructions, and the ordinary checks on the monthly expenditure having been applied, the annual expenses of Government have since then been kept well
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