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The hardship from which the Civil Service is suffering is acute, and we are confident that the Government will act now as it has acted in the past, and take the necessary measures to meet the loss which has already been suffered, and to restore equilibrium for the future. We cannot regard a further rise in silver, and consequent further depreciation of salaries with any feelings but those of grave anxiety.

10. In justification of the statement made in the foregoing paragraphs that the basis of all expenditure in the Colony is a 1/8 dollar, we venture to draw attention to the fact that the Estimates for the years 1904, 1905 and 1906 were framed on this rate. The result has been

that the Government has made large savings out of the salaries of its servants.

In 1905 this saving amounted to about $260,000, and for this year it will probably amount to $350,000.

11. It is often said that the question of salary is a mere matter of contract and that having accepted it, the rough as well as the smooth must be taken without complaint. We submit that there is nothing in the remotest degree resembling a free contract in the case of an officer in the Colonial Service who is offered promotion. The true relation between an officer in the Colonial Civil Service and the Secretary of State as representing the Crown seems to us with respect to be rather this:-The officer gives his whole time and energies to the Service. The Secretary of State is justified in insisting on this to the utmost, and when the officer is no longer capable, through age or ill health, of rendering these services, he must go. On the other hand the officer relies on the Secretary of State to see that the salary is sufficient for the needs of the office; and as circumstances arise over which the officer has no control which create violent fluctuations in the salary, he is justified in looking to the Secretary of State to re-adjust it, and put it upon a more stable footing. It may be said that there is no such condition in the contract: the numerous cases in which adjustments have been made, we submit, fully warrant its being considered as incorporated therein. Looking at the matter from a different point of view, it cannot be for the good of the public service that its servants should be subjected to the inconvenience, and in many cases, the grievous hardship of having their monthly stipend considerably reduced.

12. In conclusion we submit with respect and confidence that the time has arrived when the whole question of the salaries in Hongkong should again be revised as in 1890. Such a revision is we submit inevitable owing to the rapid and violent fluctuations of exchange which were not foreseen when the present scale of salaries was fixed and owing to many other circumstances, all tending to an increase in the cost of living and further because the scale is based on a rate of exchange which has never since been approached, and which is now out of proportion to the rate by which all expenses in the Colony are governed.

We believe that a new scale which would be acceptable to the Secretary of State could be arrived at by a Commission composed entirely of unofficials, or on which the unofficials were in a majority. We should leave our case with complete confidence in their hands be- cause they are familiar with the conditions of life in the Colony and also with what is done by commercial firms under like circumstances.

F. T. PIGGOTT,

Chief Justice.

HENRY S. BERKELEY,

Attorney General.

S. T. DUNN,

Superintendent, Botanical and Forestry Department.

Mr. H. R. PHELIPS, Local Auditor, at present absent from the Colony, has authorised me to say that he joins in this memorial.

F. T. PIGGOTT.

The late Captain BARNES-LAWRENCE, R.N., Harbour Master, participated in the drafting of this memorial.

F. T. PIGGOTT.

Hongkong, 30th October, 1906.