Colonial Despatches

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 contingentServices 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 duringwhich 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 difficultiesof 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.