170
488
THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 19TH OCTOBER, 1878.
J
I must say there is another innovation I should like to make in this matter. The Finance Committee is something similar to the House of Consoons when the House sits in what is called Committee of the whole House. In its capacity as Committee of the whole House, the House of Commons deals with financial questions, and deals thoroughly with them If I introduce here the system of enabling our Members of Council to deal with the Estimates long before they come on the public board, I do not see why I should deprive the public of the Colouy, who, for anght I know, may be interested in what the Finance Committee is doing, of that privilege which we have in England when the House of Commons sits in Committee of the whole House; and therefore I am considering whether it would be agreeably or not to the Members of the Finance Committee if I were to allow reporters to be present at their fature meetings. Of course, Honourable Members are well aware that the Finance Committee of the Legislative Council consists of every Member of the Comcil except myself. It consists of all the Non-official Members, and of all the Official Members except the Governor, and I have no doubt the highly intelligent public of this Colony would be only glad to know what is being done about the finances, in Committee, before the time comes when the Governor lays the Estimates on the table. And, in touching upon this, I will repeat what I said the first time I had the honour of addressing you on the subject, namely, that any Member of the Finance Committer who considers and consents to any vote is not necessarily bound, when he comes here to the public Council, to support that vote: when he comes into the Council, he is as free as before to take whatever line he likes about it.
I certainly hare derived, both last year and this, very great assistance from the unusual course I adopted. In now informing you of my intention to continue it, it is only my duty to say that, whatever course I may take, 1 cannot bind my successor, or any future Governor for all I know, some future Governor may revert to the old system of making the statement without the Finance Committee having seen the proposed Estimates of Expenditure. I only speak for myself, when saying that in future I shall adopt that system which I have found work so well.
In November last, also, gentlemen, I told you why it was that I had felt it necessary, on my arrival in this Colony, to look very sharply after the expenditure. Mr. GARDINER AUSTIN put into my hands, as soon as I arrived, the returns, which had been audited a few weeks previously, of the year 1876. He did his duty at once in drawing my attention to a matter which undoubtedly every Governor should regard with great anxiety, namely, to the fact that in 1870, whilst the expenditure amounted to $902,500, the revenue had amounted only to $885,308; in other words, the expenditure bud outstripped the revenue, fortunately only by a small sum. But, seeing that this was the case, it became my duty to give that close attention to the finances of the Colony which I have endeavoured to give, and I mentioned to you last November that I very carefully scrutinised from time to time the monthly proposals of every head of a department for the expenditure in his department. Well, how has that worked? You have had before you, in the month of April, 1878, the finance returns for the year 1877, showing that the revenue of 1877 was greater than the expenditure of that year. I don't know that I can more clearly show to you the result of the returns to which I am referring than by reminding you that ou the day when I made any statement last year, the 12th November, 1 anticipated having at the end of the year 1877 a balance of $977,000. I find that, in January, 1878, the Colonial Treasurer was able to certify the last year's balance at $295,512, being somewhat in excess of the sum I had anticipated. I have returns laid before me every week by the Treasurer of the Colony. I have here now the last return prepared by him. It is the usual weekly return, dated 12th October, and according to that the balance to our credit at this date is $373,014. I need hardly tell you that this is exclusive of what we call the Special Fund. That fund amounted to $380,000, until, at my request, the Secretary of State sanctioned $10,000 being voted to the China Famine Fund. The Special Fund is now $370,000, so that, adding to the Special Fund the balance now at the credit of the Colony, we get a sum total of $743,000. So far, gentlemen, for the result as regards the balance in the Treasury chest.
Thanks to my Honourable friends the Auditor General and Colonial Treasurer, I am also in a position to inform you what has been the actual result of the first nine months, that is, the first three quarters, of the current year. You will remember that, when I framed the Estimates for 1878, I anticipated that, by stimulating the revenue, not by additional taxation, but by collecting what the existing law entitled us to collect, and on the other hand carefully looking after the expenditure, our revenue at the end of this year would exceed the expenditure by a sum of $71,954. When I estimated in November, 1877, for this surplus on the current accounts of the Colony in 1878, I know that some of my Honourable friends, though they were good enough to entertain some confidence in my administration, yet entertained doubts of the possibility of our having large a balance as $71,000 of revenue in excess of expenditure. My Honourable friend the Treasurer has now sent to me tho returns, closed and certified, of the first three quarters of the year, and these returns will enable us so far to test the accuracy of what I anticipated. I find that, in the first three quarters of this year, the revenue has not only been in excess of the expenditure, but has so far exceeded it that we have a surplus on the nine monthe transactions of $85,923. Therefore it is possible that at the close of the year 1878, instead of 871,000, we may have a surplus of $100,000.
So
You will be interested to learn what are the items which give this increase of revenue above expenditure and which exhibit an excess over the previous year. I fiud, for instance, that our actual receipts for the year 1877 from leased lands amounted to $120,554. Now if our rent-roll produced exactly the same sum in 1878 as it did in 1877 we should get in the nine months to which I am now referring $90,416. But 1 am happy to say that the rent-roll of the Colony is increasing and that in the rine months instead of having only $90,000 we have $105,000, and I look forward to having at the close of the year from that important source of revenue $135,000, instead of the $120,000 we had last year. In passing I should say to you that in the return of our rent-roll I do not include that which really would be an item of capital, namely, premiums on the sale of the land. I am dealing now with the rent-roll and that alone.
We may receive before the end of the year considerable sums of premium on the sales of lands, but I prefer to take no notice of it because it is eating into our capital. What I am now dealing with is healtby revenue. Next, taking the item of stamps, the amount actually received last year was $118,488; in other words, that ought to give us for the nine months of the present year $88,866; but instead! of that it has given us $95,603, and the total sum to be derived from stumps this year I calculate at $127,000. I am bourd here to say that, to whatever source may be traced the increase in the rent-roll, it would not perhaps be proper to assume that the whole increase in the revenue from stamps is derived from a similar source, for it has been my duty to institute,
THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 19TH OCTOBER, 1878.
489
since I have come to the Colony, certain prosecutions under the Stamp Ordinance. I have been favoured by the Collector of Stamps with a return for the last three or four years, from which it appears that in 1874 there was one prosecution under the Stamp Ordinance against one defendant. In the year 1875 there were no prosecutions. In the your 1870 there were o prosecutions. Last year there were six prosecntious against nine defendants; and up to August, which is the date of the return this year, there were ten prosecutions against nineteen defendants. In all cases the defendants were Chinese. As you are aware, I am enforcing the Stamp Ordinance against them. They were not called upon to pay in former years—at east, such is my opinion--their proper proportion of the stamp revenue. They are doing so now, and no doubt a portion at least of the considerable inercase which has taken place in the revenue from stamps is due to the cause I have indicated. may say before leaving the subject that in the opinion of competent authorities there were more evasions by Chinese of the Stamp Ordinance in the years 1875 and 1876, when there were no prosecutions, than in 1877 and 1878 when there have be prosecutions,
I
In my statement to the Council last November I mentioned what every Honourable Member considered one of the best tests of our prosperity, and that is the junk trade. Our revenue from that source last year was 819,051. That ought to give us for nine months $14,989. In fact we have received in the nine months $15,501. From the registry of cargo imals we received last year 82,347. The actual receipts for the first niue months of 1878 were $2,531. I need not remind
that the increase probably represents nearly the whole increase of the year, because in the case of cargo boats few are registered in the last quarter of the year. In the item of light dues I find that last year the sum total was $14,984. That ought to give us in round numbers for the nine mouths $11,000, whereas we have got $13,928, and I expect to receive altogether from light dues not far short of $18,000.
You
There is another item of some importance, and that is the item in the Estimates cailed Interest. Now, nt the close of 1876, there was a sum of $20,000 in the Chartered Banks at 5 per cent. On the 31st March, 1877, that sum amounted to $80,000 $80,000 at 5 per cent. gives $4,000 per annum profit. On the 30th June, 1877, it was increased to $100,000, and on the 30th September, 1877, it was still further increased to $210,000. On the last day of the year 1877, it amounted to $270,000, and at this date we have in the Chartered Banks of this Colony, earning interest at 5 per cent., the sum of $300,000, a sum uot only exceeding any investment of that kind heretofore, but more than double any sum hitherto savel from revenue, independently of the gambling fund, and lodged in the Banks at interest. On this item the Colony is now making $18,000 per annum profit,
Now, gentlemen, those fiets no doubt you will say are of importance, but the importance they have for the public [ becomes very practical if they can enable us to do something in the way of reducing taxation.
There are, however, two items-comparatively small items-which we can no longer include in the revenue of the Colony, and of which I shall have a word or two to say. We have been in the habit of making considerable sums by what is called the profit on subsidiary coins. Towards the early part of the year 1877, the profit on subsidiary coins exceeded $20,000. Well, it is, to my mind, a nice question to consider how far this Government ought to make a profit on subsidiary coins. We don't coin them; they are coined in England. They are sent to us by the Imperial Government. Of course we pay for them in Euglaud, but when we get them here we get them for the convenience of the community, and I cannot believe that it is a sound policy for this Government to make a profit out of subsidiary coins. I had taken that view of the matter mud communicated it to Mr. AUSTIN before I received a despatch from the Secretary of State in which Lord CARNARVON adverted in pretty strong terms to the practice of making a profit out of the subsidiary coins in Hongkong; and the result, as you know, is that now any one can get coins from the Treasury. We make no profit on them; they are supplied at the rate we have obtained them at ourselves.
The next item that will no longer figure in the revenne returns of the Colony of Hongkong amounted last year to $7,023; it is the item for brothel licences. On that subject I have received some despatches from Her Majesty's Government. A question was lately asked in the House of Commons, and a copy of that question was sent to me by Sir MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH, in a despatch in which he said :----
"I have the honour to inform you that a question, of which I enclose a copy, has been asked in the House of Commons as to the revenue derived under Ordinance 10 of 1867, from houses of ill-fame in the Colony under your Government.
"It has been alleged that the balance of the fund now in hand amounts to $50,000, and though I can scarcely think "that such is the case, I should wish to have full information on the subject.
"If, therefore, this point has not already been dealt with by the Commission, I request that you will either invite them to include in their report a statement of the condition of any fund that has been formed under the 66th section of the "Ordinance, together with any recommendation on the subject that they may think proper to make: or that you will obtain "this information from the records of the Treasury and report to me at an early date the result of your inquiry."
I sent this despatch at once to the Commission,-two of the members of the Commission are now sitting at this table and they lost no time in ascertaining the facts Sir MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH wanted to know. Going back only as far as Ordinance 10 of 1867-which came into operation in April, 1868-from April, 1863, to April, 1877, the Colony received from brothel licences $74,404. During the same period hospital fees from prostitutes amounted to $0,849; fines of prostitutes and brothel-keepers, $11,802, making a sum total of $96,616. Adding to that the sum that had been obtained from sitailar sources for the few years before the passing of that Ordinance, and then deducting from the sum total the cost of the Lock Hospital and the salaries of the Inspectors of Brothels, I am afraid that, instead of $50,000, the pront of the Colony has been something like $80,000 or $90,000 under that Ordinance. When I looked back at what had occurred when the Ordinance passed, I saw that the particular clanse which rendered it compulsory upon the officers in the Colony that there should be a special fund for it, and that this was not to be paid to the revenue-I saw that that clause was passed
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