HONGKONG, Ir is quite natural tht the Governor of @ Colony should enter upon his daties with an impression that the '8 of the colonists are likely to be prejudiced and narrow. Ho will nob good Governor if he at once adopts as gospel truth every statement that is current at the dinner-tables of the subordinates of the civil service, or at the mess of the regiment he finds quartered in the Colony. There are a large number of local topics. which, if he is a wise man, he will allow to cool, and he will dispassionately listen to all sides of the various burning questions that are intruded by ardent partisanship upon his notice. He is sure to find that his predecessor has a party of detractors and a party of sympathisers, and every effort will be made to induce him to commit himself on one side or the other, If he is prudent he will ponder these things and hold the balance as evenly as be can betwoon the two parties. At first ho will be praised for caution, and if he is ata later date called a trimmer, he must fall back on the consolations of philosophy, and be thankful that he is nob called anything worse. In time, if ho has a policy to develope he will see the best way to set about developing it, and the safest hands in whom to confide his plans. At all events, the wisdom of seeing how the land lies is so obvious that it seems incredible an official should ever neglect the tentative process, We should have a poor opinion of a Governor who made up his mind that everything was administered in the Colony entrusted to him in the best possible way, and that nothing remained for him but to let the machine roll on in the grooves wherein it had moved under his excellent predecessor, If an Amurath always followed an Amuratb, and no alterations in the various administrative and legislative departments were ever made, our colonies would stagnate. New blood is a necessity everywhere, It is impose sible to avoid a Governor having pre. conceived ideas of what the Colony needs, and in many cases these preconesived ideas are right, but he should not at once thrust them upon Her Majesty's lieges unmodified by advice and untested by experience. We are afraid that His Excellency the Governor of Hongkong has erred grievously in his mode of procedure. Sir John Pope Hennessy came on the stage of Hongkong politics with an
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.