wisest course and will certainly be the course adopted unless under a change of policy the prosperity of the place revives. … Let perpetual leases be granted at a moderate ground rent (say £20 or so for a sea frontage lot and £2 for a suburban lot) and let the revenue thus levied be applied exclusively to the maintenance of an efficient Police Force, leaving the other expenses to be borne by the nation, and I feel convinced that in the course of a few years Hongkong will take a new turn and become one of our most flourishing as well as valuable possessions.'
The final report of this Parliamentary Committee, though not mentioning Sir J. Davis, and aiming at reform rather than criticism, condemned his administrative policy in toto. 'In addition to natural and necessary disadvantages, Hongkong appears to have laboured under others, created by a system of monopolies and farms and petty regulations peculiarly unsuited to its position and prejudicial to its progress. These seem to have arisen partly from an attempt to struggle with the difficulties of establishing order and security in the midst of the vagabond and piratical population which frequent its waters and infest its coasts: and partly from a desire to raise a revenue in the Island in some degree adequate to the maintenance of its civil Government. To this latter object, however, we think it unwise to sacrifice the real interests of the settlement, which can only prosper under the greatest amount of freedom of intercourse and traffic which is consistent with the engagements of treaties and internal order; nor do we think it right that the burden of maintaining that which is rather a post for general influence and the protection of the general trade in the China Seas than a colony in the ordinary sense, should be thrown in any great degree on the merchants or other persons who may be resident upon it. To the revision of the whole system we would call the early attention of the Government, as well as to that of the establishment of the Settlement which we cannot but think has been placed on a footing of needless expense.' The Committee finally pressed
