No. 22

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your Despatches
No. 130 of the 27th September and No. 155 of the 30th November last,
the first enclosing the Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure for 1867
and the Appropriation Ordinance No. 13 of 1867, to provide for an
expenditure of $66,658.30 for the contingent Services of that year,
the second forwarding the Supplementary Estimate, for the year 1866
with an Ordinance No. 27 of 1867 to confirm an expenditure of
$96,918.11 for the service of 1866 not authorized in the grant for
that year.

I regret to observe that these estimates and the Ordinances
founded upon them have been so long detained in the Colony, and that
considering the embarrassed state of the Finances you did not in your
Despatches state how far the Estimates had been borne out by the
experience of the two or three first quarters of the year during
which they had been detained.

I have now to convey to you Her Majesty's confirmation and
allowance of the Ordinances in question and to transmit to you, for
your information and guidance, a copy of a letter from the Lords
Commissoners of the Treasury, to whom they were referred, together
with the Estimates and with your Despatch No. 154 of the 30th
November.

I should be obliged if you would furnish me with a definite and
detailed report upon the retrenchments which have been made in order
to meet the difficulties of the Colony, showing the periods at which
they were made, whether by way of reducing salaries and offices or by
way of stopping Public Works.

I have further to request in order that I may more fully
understand the present financial position of the Colony, that you
will report at once the steps which you may have taken to increase
the Revenue either by any change in the taxation or by providing for
the better collection of them.