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THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 16TH NOVEMBER, 1878.
THE FINANCES OF THE COLONY.
HIS EXCELLENCY.-Gentlemen, it will be in the recollection of Members of the Council that last year, in accordance with the usual practice in the Colony, I laid before the Council my Financial Statement, when submitting the Estimates for I said:-"Some 1878. On that occasion, I mentioned to the Council that I had taken, in one respect, an unusual course,
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"time ago, towards the end of September, I gave to the Finance Committee the trouble of looking over the Estimates of Expenditure for 1878. It is not usual for a Governor to do so, but this being the first time I had had to prepare the "Estimates for this Colony, I thought it well to be guided by their greater local experience, and accordingly the Estimates came before them." Well, gentlemen, I had to consider this year how far that innovation had worked well or otherwise, and, being of opinion that it worked remarkably well, I have this year also troubled the Finance Committee to look into the Estimates of Expenditure, the various proposals that have been made by heads of depărtments, increases of salaries, &c., and the Finance Committee from time to time have met and considered these proposals, and before next month, I trust that they will have had before them the whole of the proposed Estimates of Expenditure for the year 1879.
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 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 reven e ad amounted only to $885,309, 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'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 anticapated 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 so large a balance as $71,000 of revenue in excess 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.
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ste 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 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
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