From these documents it appears that the estimated ordinary revenue of Port Phillip for the year 1844 amounts to £83,390, while the sums voted for the public service in that district for the same year amount only to £44,146 8 10, leaving a balance of about £39,000, which goes into the Sydney treasury, and for which the people of Port Phillip receive no equivalent, unless their share of the expenses of the governor and council be considered as such. Allowing for this £3,000 a year, there is still a balance of 36,000 lost to them. If we subtract from the estimates £4,000, the sum voted for public buildings, the expenditure on the current purposes of government would be about £40,000.
Under these circumstances there can be, as I said before, no reasonable apprehension of the colony of Port Phillip not being able to support the expenses of its government in case of its separation from Sydney; for, allowing £10,000 a year as the increased expenditure consequent upon such a step, there would still remain a sum of about £33,000 per annum applicable to the purposes of public works, and to meet contingencies. When this statement of accounts is considered, and when it is further added that the establishments of the country are, on the plea of poverty, kept on a footing inadequate to its wants—thus, for instance, that
receiving from 1s. to 1s. 2d. per diem; the border police, consisting of sixteen convict troopers, receiving no pay; and the black native police, consisting of twenty-eight aboriginal troopers, receiving no pay; even allowing £615 17s., (the amount of pay drawn by their officers,) and a liberal allowance for remounts, and wear and tear of horses, can cost £7,182 12s. for a year in a country where good horses can be had at from £15 to £20 each, where little or no artificial food is required for the horses, and where rations do not cost above £8 or £9 per man. At present their cost amounts to more than £100 per annum for each man, a pretty good allowance for convicts and blacks.
