MON
DROIT.
THE HONGKONG
Government Gazette.
報 Py 轅 港 香
Published by Authority.
No. 23.
VICTORIA, SATURDAY, 4TH JUNE, 1881.
VOL. XXVII.
號三十二第 日八初月五年巳辛 日四初月六年一十八百八千一 簿七十二第
MEETING OF THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
SPEECH OF HIS EXCELLENCY THE GOVERNOR ON THE CENSUS RETURNS AND THE PROGRESS OF THE COLONY.
The following report, extracted from the Daily Press, is republished for general information.
A Meeting of the Legislative Council was held on Friday, the 3rd June, 1881. There were present:-
His Excellency the Governor,-Sir JOHN POPE HENNESSY, K.C.M.G.
The Acting Chief Justice, Honourable F. SNOWDEN.
The Acting Colonial Secretary,-Honourable F. STEWART.
The Attorney General,-Honourable E. L. O'Malley.
The Acting Colonial Treasurer,-Honourable M. S. TONNOCHY.
The Honourable NG CHOY.
The Honourable F. B. JOHNSON.
MINUTES.
The minutes of the last meeting were read and confirmed.
His EXCELLENCY-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, almost 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 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 (Hear, hear).
proce-
In putting these census returns before you, and in moving, as I shall do at the end of my state- ment, that they be printed, I desire to give every Member of the Council an opportunity of making any remarks he may think fit upon them. They 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 bonâ fide the result of healthy commercial progress, and a matter of necessity.
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