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EXTRACT of a DESPATCH from Mr. Secretary DUNDAS to the Honourable FREDERICK NORTH, dated Downing Street, 13th March 1801.
“62. In taking a general review of the different resources which may either imme- diately or in the course of a few years be made to contribute to the public income in Ceylon, without vexation or oppression to the inhabitants, and consistently on the contrary with the progressive improvement of individual and public prosperity, I cannot doubt that at a period not very distant the revenues of the island will be found fully adequate to defray all its expenses civil and military, and that a considerable overplus (which I am sanguine enough to believe will gradually reach to 100,0001. per annum) will remain disposable for the benefit of this country in such manner as it may then be thought proper to direct, but I apprehend there is no immediate ground for entertaining any such sanguine expectation.
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"63. On the contrary I am disposed to be of opinion (though I shall be happy to find that in this I am mistaken) that for two or three years after resuming the Govern- ment the European part of the necessary military establishment, including the different branches of the European staff attached to the army in Ceylon, which, however, should be upon as small a scale as possible, must be defrayed by this country, and that the
pay revenue will not at an earlier period exceed what may be necessary to raise and native troops, of which I shall make mention hereafter, to defray all the extraordinary and contingent expenses of the military establishment, together with the whole of the civil and judicial establishments, and to provide a fund for such improvements as may be absolutely necessary or obviously advantageous for the advancement of agriculture and the means of internal communication in the island."
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
سلبيا
C.O.882
Reference :-
2 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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EXTRACT of & DESPATCH from Lord HOBART to the Honourable FREDERICK NORTH, dated Downing Street, 8th February 1803.
"In the preceding parts of this letter I have had frequent occasion to advert to the expenses of Ceylon, and to the necessity of taking immediate measures for retrenchment. "The amount at which you calculate the excess of the disbursements beyond the receipts, points this out in so forcible a manner, that I cannot too strongly repeat my injunctions that every reduction of expense that can be made without prejudice to the service should be enforced; and that every improvement should be adopted for increasing the revenue so that His Majesty's Ministers may be enabled to show that if the expectation which the nation was given to entertain of a surplus revenue, has not yet been realized, the deficiency has in no degree arisen from the want of due economy in the expenditure of the public money.
"Three companies of the royal artillery and a corps of engineers now proceed to Ceylon, will be able to send the detachment of the Company's artillery, and as upon their arrival you and all others attached to the Ordnance and Store Departments, to the continent of India, it will be proper that the future payments for this service should be drawn for by the officer who may be authorized by the Board of Ordnance; it will also be requisite that the pay
of the European regiments should be drawn for by the person whom His Majesty's Paymasters-General have appointed their deputy at Ceylon.
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By these means those two heads of expense will be defrayed by the departments in
the estimates of which they are provided for, and your disbursements will be confined to corps which you may find the civil charges of your Government, to the pay of the native it absolutely necessary to keep up, and to the allowance of half batta and other extra- ordinary military disbursements.
"In communicating to you the King's commands upon the subject of the permanent system of allowance for the staff under your Government, it may not be unadvisable for me to apprise you that in fixing those allowances the object has rather been to assimilate them, as far as circumstances will admit of it, to those which are received in His Majesty's other foreign dominions, than to look to the establishments in India as the scale by which they should be regulated, and I should wish particularly to impress upon your mind that whatever share a due attention to economy may have had in the view which has been taken of this important question the ultimate decision upon it has been governed by considerations which are of greater moment to the general interest of His Majesty's Army.
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