Sessional_Paper_1905 — Page 815

HONGKONG.

INSANITARY PROPERTIES RESUMPTIONS.

CORRESPONDENCE

SIR,

No. 349-

GOVERNOR SIR M. NATHAN TO MR. LYTTELTON.

Government House, Hongkong, 26th September, 1904.

Mr. May has in accordance with the instructions contained in your Despatch No. 161, dated the 26th May last, placed before me the correspondence on the subject of a suggested Trust to carry out schemes for the resumption of insanitary areas and the improvement of the City of Victoria.

2. I entirely concur with him that a considerable sùm should be devoted each year to the resumption of insanitary property, and that this resumption should proceed on continuous lines.

3. I do 1.ot think it would be desirable that it should be laid down either that a sum of $350,000+ half the proceeds of land sales, as proposed by the Committee that reported on the 24th September, 1903, or that a sum of not less than $4co,coo dollars as recommended in Mr. May's Despatch No. 150, dated the 9th April, 1904, should be devoted to resumptions. With regard to the first of these proposals I am averse to the introduction into the Estimates of the principle, which, if introduced, would admit of various logical extensions, of allocating a special source of receipts to a special object of expenditure; and with regard to the second I am convinced that were you to lay down any standing instruction for the allocation for a period of years of a large sum for resumptions you would frequently be asked to suspend it. For instance, in the draft Estimates for 1905, it has been necessary, on account of contracts already entered into, to set aside $750,000 for water supply scheme and $535,500 for continuing the erection of important public buildings that have been commenced. These sums, together with $359,800 for some smaller continuation services, and a few minor works of sanitary and other urgent necessity, bring up the total Public Works Extraordinary Estimates to $1,645,300, and it has been considered that $170,000 is the minimum sum that can be added to this Estimate for compensation and resump- tions of insanitary property under the Public Health and Buildings Ordinance of 1903. Had such a standing instruction as that which has been suggested been in force it would have been neces- sary either to have asked for its suspension, or to have raised additional taxation to meet the wants of the particular year, or to have broken contracts and stopped the execution of the important works in hand, or to have undertaken no other works, however important or urgent. I think that for the present it must be left to the Governor to suggest each year as large a sum as he thinks can conveniently be appropriated and profitably spent on resumptions and compensations.

4. In the circumstances that no sum can be set aside for resumptions on a very ext ended scale, at any rate until the extensive water supply schemes are completed in 1906, that the lines on which resumptions should be carried out are to some extent already indicated in Mr. O. Chadwick and Dr. W. J. Simpson's Report of the 14th May, 1902, on the question of the Housing of the Population of Hongkong, and that various reports that are received from the Sanitary Board contain specific recommendations for minor resumptions, I do not at present support the proposal for the establishment of a Trust embodied in the Report submitted in Sir H. A. Blake's Despatch No. 485 of the 23rd October, 1903, nor that for an Advisory Board

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