AnnualReport-1881 — Page 1

ADDRESS OF GOVERNOR SIR JOHN POPE HENNESSY, K.C.M.G., ON THE

CENSUS RETURNS AND THE PROGRESS OF HONGKONG.

At the Meeting of the Legislative Council on Friday, the 3rd June, 1881, in laying the census returns on the table, His Excellency said:-Gentlemen, you are aware that, under instructions from Her Majesty's Government, the census was taken in this Colony on the 3rd of April last. The former census was taken at the end of 1876. It was submitted to Sir ARTHUR KENNEDY a few days before he left the Colony for Queensland, and it became my duty to make a brief report upon it. It is unusual, alınost unprecedented, for the same Governor to have to make reports upon two successive censuses.

A census is generally taken every ten years, but it happens that only four years and four months have elapsed since the last census in this Colony. But apart altogether from what may be unusual in official proce- dure, I find, looking at the returns I am now about to put upon the table, that there is something unusual in the important facts they disclose. A comparison of the census of 1881 with the census of December 1876, shows an amount of real progress and substantial prosperity in the short space of four years, such as, I believe, can only be equalled in the Australian Colonies, and which is, perhaps, unprecedented in any of the Crown colonies.

These census returns will enable the Council to answer three questions. They will enable you to decide how far the Colony of Hongkong has really fulfilled the objects for which it was established; they will enable you also to determine whether it is true, what you have all heard said so often (out of Hongkong, or by unobservant residents in it), namely, that there are no trades and manufactures whatever in this colony; and these returns will also enable us to decide a question much discussed here now, whether the recent transactions in land, the important sales and transfers of land, that have taken place of late, are speculative, or whether they are really bona fide the result of healthy commercial progress, and a matter of necessity.

With respect to the latter point, I am placing upon the table a return which has been prepared in the Survey Department in consequence of a minute of mine, in which I directed attention to the publication in the Daily Press of the 11th May, 1881, of a statement of transactions in landed proper- ty in Hongkong, and called upon the proper officers to have that return checked and verified. Accordingly, that return, which, no doubt, you have all seen, was transmitted to the Acting Surveyor General. He has now furnished us with an authentic statement of the transactions, from the Land Office books, that have taken place in the transfer and sale of property from the first of January last year to the 11th of May this year. To be brief, I think, on the whole, he corroborates what appeared in the Daily Press; and the summary he gives at the end is to this effect:-Total value of properties bought by Chinese from foreigners, $1,710,036; total value of properties bought by Chinese from the Govern- ment, $17,705; total value of properties bought by foreigners from foreigners, $216,750; total value of properties bought by foreigners from the Government, $5,060; total value of properties bought by foreigners from Chinese, $16,450.

Now, this large item of $1,710,000 on the transfer of property, almost entirely for commercial purposes, to the Chinese community since January last year, is undoubtedly an event of great impor- tance. Is it speculative, or is it justified by the returns I am now laying on the table? In the first place, what do we learn from the census returns of the Registrer General? We find that the population has risen from 139,144 in 1876 to 160,402 in 1881, showing, in four years and four months, an increase of 21,258, and of this increase the Chinese population account for 20,532. The Registrar General adds, that the European and American community is larger by 273; that the increase is among the British, Portuguese, Germans and Italians, and is that of women and children; that the male adult population of Europeans and Americans has decreased. This fact is of interest, because, whilst, taking the male adult British subjects from the United Kingdom, there has been a decrease from 342 to 336, there has been an increase in the number of women and of boys and girls. So, too, with the Portuguese; there is a falling off from 418 adult males in 1876 to 384 at present, but an increase in the women and children. So, too, with the Germans; there is a falling off in the adult German population, and in the American population, and in the French population, but in each case there is an increase in the number of women and children. This fact, I say, is of interest, because the tropical Colony where European children flourish cannot be very unhealthy. The vitality of a foreign child is a delicate test of climate, and I believe we can point to this particular item in the census returns as affording some indication that Hongkong is growing more healthy. And now, proceeding to the question of the 20,000 additional Chinese, we have to consider this:Has the increase in the various mercantile occupations of the Chinese been such as to justify the remarkable transfer of landed property I have referred to? The census returns furnish us with an opportunity of testing how far in the tharbour of Victoria itself the means we have of commercial movement-that is, the transference of goods from steamer to steamer, from steamer to shore, and vice versa-how far that has been facilitated since the year 1876. From the returns, I find that that movement is conducted by steam launches, cargo boats, and sampans. The steam launches have increased from 8 in 1876 to 37 in 1881, the cargo boats from 494 to 656, and the sampans from 1,357 to 2,088. So far for the machinery that