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Hong Kong Annual Administration Reports, 1841–1941
HER MAJESTY'S COLONIAL POSSESSIONS.
designated by a word (ἀποικία) “which signifies a separation of dwelling, a departure from home, a going out of the house.”* In fact, Hong Kong, like Gibraltar, corresponds to the fortified outpost of the Greeks, which they denoted by a term (ἐπιτειχίςμα) signifying "a fort or stronghold placed so as to command an enemy's country."† and is now, as Burke said of Gibraltar, a post of power, a post of superiority, of connexion, of commerce; a post which makes us invaluable to our friends, and "formidable to our enemies."
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5. But Hong Kong corresponds also, even more than Gibraltar, to the emporium (ἐμπόριον) or "mart of commerce" of the Greeks. That this new dependency has already exceeded the most sanguine expectations of the statesmen who advocated and carried out the annexation of Hong Kong to the British Empire, is amply proved by a single fact recorded in the official statistics which accompany this Despatch. It will be seen that the tonnage of the shipping entered at the port of Hong Kong in the year 1882 amounted to nearly 5,000,000 tons, to exactly 4,976,233 tons. This is larger than the tonnage of the shipping entered at the port of London in the year 1837, the year of the accession of the reigning sovereign; that is, six years before the annexation of Hong Kong to the British Crown, and at a period when this Island was a desolate rock, uninhabited save by a few Chinese pirates and fishermen.
6. It will be recollected that Burke, in one of his most famous speeches,§ pointed out that in 68 years, during the life of Lord Chancellor Bathurst, the trade of the American colonies so grew that it was equal in 1775 to what the trade of Great Britain had been in 1707. He said: "Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought in by varieties of people, by succession of civilising conquests and civilising settlements in a series of 1,700 years, you shall see so much added to her by America in the course of a single life!" So it may be said that during 40 years of the reign of our present gracious Sovereign, that is, between 1843 and 1883, the city of Victoria in Hong Kong, which was not in existence at the time of the Queen's accession, has added to the British Empire a shipping trade greater than that which London, a mart of commerce even under the Romans, possessed after a prosperous career of 18 centuries.
7. Again, the public revenue of Hong Kong amounted in 1882 to $1,209,517, equivalent at the present rate of exchange to about two hundred and twenty thousand pounds (£220,000) in English money; that is, the public revenue of this Island already far exceeds the entire public revenue of the ancient kingdom of
* Adam Smith, Ibid.
† Liddell and Scott's Greek Lexicon.
‡ Delivered in the House of Commons.
§ On Conciliation with America. March 22, 1775.
↑ Or, inclusive of local trade, 5,151,721 tons.