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THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 14TH SEPTEMBER, 1867.

Appendix B.

3. The Council will however bear in mind that although a realisation of the Colony's Assets at the close of last Year might have left it a surplus above its Liabilities to the small amount stated, yet, as I stated last Year, it would be unsafe to regard those Assets as being all available, and consequently it was a possible contingency that, whilst nominally possessing available Assets, the Colony might be driven to borrow money to meet its engagements, a contingency, which actually did happen.

4. It will elucidate my meaning if I lay before the Council the last Return of the Treasurer showing the amount of Subsidiary Coins received and remaining on hand since the 17th September last Year, and you will perceive from it that with the coinage received from England, the Colony's Assets, from time to time, included about $220,000 in Subsidiary Coins, of which exclusive of $20,000 sent to the Government at Singapore, it has required more than Eleven Months' constant exertion with the help of H. M. Commissariat, the Government Contractors, and all the influence of the Government, to get rid of $138,863. Thus upwards of $60,000 of those "Assets" are still in our hands, unavailable for meeting any large ordinary payment.

5. It is certainly ominous to find that not merely are much of our Assets incon- vertible, except with difficulty, but that the surplus with which you started in 1865, viz., $298,000, was diminished at the beginning of 1866 to $184,000, whilst as you see at the commencement of this Year it had fallen to $24,000, that is, supposing the Colony had then realised all its Assets and discharged all its Liabilities, including the Military Contribution. No part of the latter has been paid since the Third Quarter of 1866, leaving therefore Five Quarters due at the end of the current Year, a debt which will then amount to $115,500, and which it is high time to devise early means of discharging.

6. The non-arrival of a large portion of Stamps and Materiêl necessary for raising a Revenue under Ordinance 12 of last Year has diminished the expected Receipts of the current Year and, if the delay has been a disappointment to the Public, I regret it.

7. Nevertheless there will probably be an excess of Assets over Liabilities at the end of the current Year of about $24,000, arising from licenses issued for the purpose of limiting the evil consequences of Gambling, as it now exists, by legalising it in a few localities subjected to Government supervision. Assuming that before the end of 1867 an amount equivalent to $65,000 shall be received from that source, there will be the surplus above mentioned. Otherwise, without a diminution of Expenditure, or some other new source of Revenue, there must be a deficit of about $41,000.

8. And here, although the Council is not at present called on to discuss or devise means of raising a Revenue, yet as you probably expect from me a general review of your financial position, I must remark that the Revenue, which incidentally arises from the policy for Control and Regulation of Gambling adopted by myself and the Executive Council under the powers which you created by Ordinance No. 9 of this Year, must be regarded as experimental, and liable either to cease altogether or to be diminished, from various causes.

9. Whatever addition comes to your means from that source can only be viewed as the accidental and unsought result of a policy to which the Govern- ment is reluctantly driven in pursuit of an object of great Public importance, and one which is entirely distinct from the acquisition of Revenue.

10. That object is the suppression of the great mass of crime, the secret confederation of thieves, burglars and bad characters, the breaking up of the principal centres of demoralisation, and removing the main source of Police corruption, all fostered by the existence in your midst of numerous but ever shifting Gambling haunts, which the Executive has found itself unable to suppress. It is no use, and the attempt would be unworthy, to conceal from ourselves the extent of that mischief. Those whose duty it is to make themselves acquainted with the details can vouch the facts. It clearly would not do to fold our armis and make no attempt to suppress an evil, whose dangerous and contaminating influence springs from a source, which the Executive thinks it can partially remove, by confining the practice now illegally followed more or less over the entire City to a few places with the sanction of the Government, on certain Conditions, and subject. to certain Regulations and Control, as contemplated by the powers, which you have recently conferred on the Government.