CO129-145 - Lieut Governor Whitfield - 1870 [6-9] — Page 302

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FINANCIAL STATEMENT.

By His Excellency MAJOR-GENERAL WHITFEILD, Lieutenant-Governor. fr., fe., de.

28th July, 1870,

I have the honor to lay before you the Supplemental Estimates of 1869 and the Estimates of 1870, with the Ordinances by which legal effect will be given thereto.

2. Had health permitted, it was the intention of SIR RICHARD GRAVES MACDONNELL to have submitted the Supplemental Estimates of 1869 with the Estimates of 1871, previous to his departure from the Colony in April last.

3. The delay has been attended with advantage, inasmuch as the instructions recently received from the Secretary of State have compelled a revision of the Estimates of 1870, and would necessarily have involved a revision also of those of 1871, even had they been passed. Moreover, the Estimates of 1870 are now pre- pared on actual, not anticipated, results, and the unlooked for opportunity has been turned to such good account that you may have every reasonable expectation that no Supplemental Estimates will be required for the year.

4. The Expenditure of 1869, for which your ratification is required, amounts to the sum of $140,777.58, but will be a satisfaction to you to know that, not- withstanding this seeming large claim on your liberality, the actual Expenditure of the Government, including the sum now to be voted, was $93,015.14 below the provision made for it.

Look at it, however, in whatever point of view you may, it cannot but occur to your minds that the difficulties of a system must be very obvious by which the Estimates of a coming year are prepared so long in advance, and when the necessities of the current year in which they are framed are, to some extent, but subjects of conjecture. It would be a great improvement if, as is the case in most of the Colonies having Representative Assemblies, the Estimates were framed in the y

year for which they were to take effect. Be this as it may, there is a still graver objection to the system which has been adopted for very many years by which large sums have, as in the present case, been expended without authority previously obtained from the Council. Hereafter, this is not to be the ease, as in accordance with instructions recently received from the Secretary of State, the Council will be to a certain extent en permanence, that is, a Financial Committee of the whole Comcil will be required to assemble periodically to consider and approve or disapprove of any new item of expenditure or any increase of specific votes which may, from time to time, be submitted by the Governor. At the close of each. all sums so approved will be covered by a short confirmatory Ordinance. 6. In the table which accompanies the Supplemental Estimates, full explanations

year,

are given in each ease of the causes influencing increased or decreased expendi- ture; and it is unnecessary, therefore, to refer to them specially again.

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