Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 December 1883 — Heng Kong’s Prosperity. [ARTICLE]

Heng Kong’s Prosperity.

Hong Kong occupies an enviable distinction. It is one of the very few eommunit’es in the world which is absolutely without a public d bt. On the contrary, it possesses a balance fund invested at interest, and amounting to £209,000, which is nearly equal to a year’s revenue. During forty years of the reign of the Queen, between 1843

and 1883, the city of'Victoria, in Hong Kong, which was not in existence at the time of her Majesty’s accession, has added to the British empire a vast shipping trade. The tonnage of the shipping entered at the port of Hong Kong in 1882 was nearly 5,000,000, a total larger than the tonnage of the shipping entered at the port of London in 1837, or six years before the annexation of the colony to the British crown, and when the island was a desolate rock uninhabited save by a few Chinese pirates and fishermen.— London Letter to the Manchester Courier.