CO129-173 - Sir Kennedy - 1876 [1-3] — Page 142

139

lenders to be advertised, for a fresh Opium contract for a term of three years to commence upon the expiration of the existing contract.

Three lenders were sent in, but when the time for them came to be opened, the highest lender was found to fall short of the existing contract by sixty-eight thousand four hundred dollars for the three years, and of the estimated opium revenue for 1876 by twenty thousand eight hundred dollars.

From information which had come to my notice, I had reason to believe that the cause of this great depreciation in the bid for the contract was a combination on the part of the existing contractors and that the three different lenders were all offered by one and the same firm under different names; be that as it might, however, it was in my opinion and in the opinion of the Executive Council out of the question to accept any one of the lenders. Accordingly, I rejected all three and caused an advertisement to be issued calling for fresh lenders.

The consequence of this was that the existing contractors, the Wo Hing Firm, sent in a lender in which it was stipulated to pay eleven thousand dollars a month for three years for...