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THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 19TH OCTOBER, 1878.
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 Commons 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 Colony, who, for aught 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 future meetings. Of course, Honourable Members are well aware that the Finance Committee of the Legislative Council consists of every Member of the Council 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 Committee 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 have 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, I 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 1876, whilst the expenditure amounted to $902,500, the revenue had amounted only to $885,308; in other words, the expenditure had 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 on the day when I made my statement last year, the 12th November, I anticipated having at the end of the year 1877 a balance of $277,000. I find that, in January 1878, the Colonial Treasurer was able to certify the last year"- halance at $295,512, being somewhat in exose of the sum I had anticipated. have returns laid before me ev
have here now ** - laat reti the
him. This shows dal cokly return, datèu 1-ta is 6773,014. I need hardly tell you that this is exclus amounted to $380,000, until, at my request, the Secretary of State sanctic
urer of the Colony. according to that ve call the Special 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 m administration, yet entertained doubts of the possibility of our having so large a balance as $71,000 of revenue in exce of expenditure. My Honourable friend the Treasurer has now sent to me the 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 months' transactions of $85,923. Therefore it is possible that at the close of the year 1878, instead of $71,000, we may have a surplus of $100,000.
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 find, for instance, that our actual receipts for the year 1877 from leased lands mounted 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 e months to which I am now referring $90,416. But I am happy to say that the rent-roll of the Colony is increasing, that in the nine months instead of having only $90,000 we have $105,000, and I look forward to having at the close of ar from that important source of revenue $135,000, instead of the $120,000 we had last year. In passing I should you that in the return of our rent-roll I do not include that which really would be an item of capital, namely, on the sale of the land. I am dealing now with the rent-roll and that alone. We may receive before the end of siderable sums of premium on the sales of lands, but I prefer to take no notice of it because it is eating into our at I am now dealing with is healthy revenue. Next, taking the item of stamps, the amount actually received 118,488; in other words, that ought to give us for the nine months of the present year $88,866; but instead n us $95,603, and the total sum to be derived from stamps this year I calculate at $127,000. I am bound › whatever source may be traced the increase in the rent-roll, it would not perhaps be proper to assume se in the revenue from stamps is derived from a similar source, for it has been my duty to institute,
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