the central parts of the city and especially the Gaol escaped almost untouched. At Westpoint Barracks (above Pokfulam Road), where the Indian troops had lost nearly half their number in 1842, sickness was so universal in 1843, that the European troops stationed there were hastily removed (July 20, 1843) on board ships in the harbour. In the year 1843, the total strength of the European and native troops was only 1,526, but, as 7,893 cases were treated in the hospitals during the same year, it appears that on an average each man passed through hospital more than five times during that dreadful year. The deaths among the troops on the Island amounted to 440, out of 1,526 men, or 1 in 3½, the cause of death being fever in 155 cases, dysentery in 137 cases, diarrhœa in 80 cases. The number of men invalided or unfit for duty was such that frequently no more than one half of the men of a company were able to attend parade and sometimes there were hardly five or six men, out of 100, fit for duty. The sanitation question was now at last taken up by the Government, and a Committee of Public Health and Cleanliness was appointed (August 16, 1843) with authority to enforce rigid sanitary rules among all classes of residents, but no effective measures were undertaken. Those rules were subsequently formulated by Ordinance No. 5 of March 20, 1844.
The land policy of the Government caused considerable dissatisfaction among the merchants. There was no objection on the part of the mercantile community to a revenue being derived from land; on the contrary they were of opinion that, Hongkong being guaranteed to be a free port, long leases and annual rents should be the sole source of revenue, to the exclusion of all other forms of taxation, such as duties on goods sold by auction, auctioneers' licence fees, registration fees, market farms, etc. Mr. A. Matheson expressed the unanimous views of Hongkong merchants when he stated that it was a most unadvisable course for the Government to attempt raising any other revenue than the land rents, at any rate until the Colony should have advanced considerably in wealth and population.
