CO129-139 - Sir MacDonnell - 1869 [8-12] — Page 222

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to render

A

Confusing subject

more perplexing than it need absolutely have been. Indeed, I never found any unofficial Member of Council in any Colony, and seldom any official Member except the Auditor General or Colonial Secretary

who had attained a reasonable

facility in handling and referring

4

to the Annual Estimates. When comparing the

expenditure of certain establishment

in one

Colony with the corresponding establishments in another I confess I have made frequent and very inconvenient mistakes, because

I perhaps had not quite exhausted all the heads under which I should have searched for certain portions of the Expenditure total given in any part of the Estimates.

nor was the rear

Perhaps in the

hope of remedying this evil I am now straining a point, and am assuming more freedom than recent modification of the Treasury Warrants allows. Yet in the

groups

any

inclosed intimates I merely seek to gather into distinct all expenditure of whatever kind belonging to each district department whether Scent - Salaries- fixed provisional-Establishment-

or