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Q.-It must have been the deliberate act of somebody who intended it?
A. It must. (The witness refers to the letter, and explains that the original came back to his office with minutes written upon it, and that the draft was then numbered to correspond with the number placed in the original in the Colonial Secretary's Office.)
Q.-Hon. A. LISTER.-There is only one other point I should like to ask you about. There is a continual outcry here about nobody ever seeing the Gazette, nobody reads the Gazette, and so forth. Do you think it would be of any practical service if one of the daily papers, or all of them, could be induced to make and publish weekly a very short summary of the contents of the Gazette, giving all tenders in full, of course without the red tape by which they are surrounded, simply the advertisements for tenders, and dismissing hydrographical notices with a single line, the whole thing occupying half a
column?
A.-I think not. I have inquired, and I find my Contractors never see an English daily paper, and for that reason I take the precaution of communicating with the Con- - tractors directly by means of a circular. I don't trust to the papers.
Q-You would not regard it as an improvement to advertise in the Chinese papers?
A.-I think not.
Q-You think the circular is everything?
A. Yes. I think I have got all the names of the respectable Contractors, and if any man comes to me for a building permit whose name I have not got, I take his name down, and if I can I give him a contract to see what he is made of.
Q. Do you know the reason why TAI YIK refuses Government work?
A.-I do. I have had a fight running on for several years. He will not do brick work for less than 15 cents a foot, I will not give more than 10 cents. Besides, the other day I was speaking to him and asked him if he would not put in a tender for Tai-tam, and he told me he had more work than he could possibly attend to; he is in bad health too; and another thing is that he objects to being present at his work; he always does his work by deputy. In our contracts, we compel the Contractor to be present at the work; he does not care for that, he is too well off.
Q-The CHAIRMAN.--That about the man being present at his work. I think you told us that, as a common thing, a Contractor having got a contract sublets it?
A-Yes, they branch it in small sub-contracts, but still they should be there to see the work is done according to specification, because we refuse to recognise a sub- contractor. If anything goes wrong we don't know the sub-contractor, we fall back on the man himself. 'I don't think you can prevent that system in China, it is so general.
Q.-Is that sub-letting in whole or in part?
A.They let the brick-laying to one, the masonry to another, and so on, but we don't recognise these men; we compel the original men to be there. TAI YIK is a man
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