708098-1869-VOTE-AND-PROCEEDINGS-OF-THE-LEGISLATIVE-COUNCIL-OF-HONGKONG-No-2-1869-FRIDAY-17TH-SEPTEMBER-1869- — Page 4

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THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 25TH SEPTEMBER, 1869.

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11. The appropriation of any part of that Fund has therefore been limited: Ist-to purposes auxiliary to the Police object for which the Licensing system was instituted, and which alone could justify such an experiment, viz.: the suppression of crime and more especially crime such as was formerly generated by frequent contact of the ignorant and needy with the criminals of the Colony in illegal gambling haunts, where the former were tempted to join in schemes for Piracies, Burglaries, and Theft. It has, therefore, been suggested that improvements in the constitution of the Police, whether by land or water, and in all appliances for detection of crime, which could not have been undertaken by the unaided ordinary Revenue of the Colony, might on that principle be tem- porarily borne by the Special Fund. Thus the cost of the Colonial vessels, which patrol the waters of the Colony, and whose utility becomes more apparent by every day's experience, is at present borne by the Special Fund. The erection of a Telegraph round the Island, and of additional Police and Telegraph stations to complete the guarded circuit so effectually as to render improbable future landings of such parties, as attacked Sowkewan on the 18th of April last, may be similarly regarded as a reasonable charge on the Fund for suppression of crime. 12. Nevertheless, to prevent any diminution of the Police Rates being effected by an unfair resort to the Special Fund, it has also been suggested that the Colony should always provide from its ordinary Revenue the means of defraying the highest Expenditure on its Police incurred in any year preceding the License system. That year was 1866 and the actual expenditure then on the Colonial Police was in round numbers $120,000, an amount ascertained after deducting from the sum charged against Police, several items improperly entered under that head-as for example Lighting Street Lamps, $20,000-an item now placed under "Miscellaneous." Therefore $120,000 is the least sum for Police which the Colony At the same time to promote Police is bound to find from its own resources. protection and prevent an inconvenient accumulation of the License Fund, expen- diture in excess of that amount, if approved by the Secretary of State, may be temporarily borne by the Special Fund.

13. 2ndly. You may assume that no application of the License Fund for any but the Police purposes, already explained, will be permitted unless for the special benefit and improvement physically or morally of the Chinese population. The Council is aware that none but persons of Chinese or Malay origin, and that no females of any nation whatever, are now admitted into the Licensed Houses, whilst the License Fees have been proportionally reduced so as to compensate for such restrictions. Even foreign travellers are not permitted to visit the Houses. The Chinese alone frequent them. Therefore, the Fees if used at all, and it would not be easy to justify a perpetual and unmeaning accumulation of them, ought apparently to be used only for purposes auxiliary to the original object of the experiment, viz.: suppression of crime, or the special benefit of the race by whose peculiar infirmity that experiment was first necessitated and is now maintained.

Thus extended 14. The purposes, therefore, to which a portion of the Special Fund has been or may be devoted, are all in accordance with the above principles. means of education are afforded to the Chinese such as new School Houses, a Lecture Room at the Central Hall, Apparatus for conducting experiments calculated to develop an interest in practical and scientific knowledge, especially, of a kind applicable to manufactures. Assistance likewise in maintaining that useful corps- the Chinese watchmen-has been given and more is promised,. though, in proportion as it is assisted from without, the Chinese subscriptions for its support decline, so that ultimately I.fear the corps must be dissolved at least for a time. I might also enumerate an extended classification of Interpreters and the employment, on a different system, of abler and better paid men in that capacity, so as to meet a hardship long complained of by the native population in connection with our Courts a large contribution ($15,000) to the erection of the Chinese Hospital under Chinese management (but with due precautions),—and a reimbursement to the Harbor Master's Department for loss of Revenue by abatement of Fees hitherto exacted from Chinese vessels only. Even the expense of special sanitary improvements in the physical condition of the Inhabitants of the Chinese Quarter of the City, which might otherwise have been indefinitely postponed, will be facilitated by contributions from the same source.

15. In all those particulars, however, care is taken that the Special Fund shall contribute nothing, except for items over and above the Colony's ordinary previous Expenditure, for which Expenditure Her Majesty's Government is resolved that it shall raise an adequate Local Revenue. Thus under the head of Education (Page 19, 1070) "rom will terefive that the Expenditure having been increased,