8.-6

XI

STAMPS. The results of the revenue for the past year disclose the fact that the Stamp Department is third on the list of revenue-producing Departments. The rapid and continued growth of the business and increase in the revenue of late years have been almost phenomenal, and are further factors in proving the continued prosperity of the colony. As I have already mentioned, for the first time on record the Stamp revenue has exceeded one million pounds. At the close of the last financial year the receipts in excess of those of the previous year amounted to £100,345, there being an increase under every head except that of Native Land Duty, which has of necessity diminished. The number of impressed stamps made during the year amounted to 8,767,367, as against 7,649,826 for the previous year, showing the enormous increase of 1,117,541 for one year. The value of adhesive stamps issued in the year 1896-7 was ,£641,264, and in the year 1903-4 £960,242, showing an increase in seven years of £318,978 — nearly 50 per cent. These figures do not include the beer-duty stamps, which for 1896-7 were £72,271 and for 1903-4 £102,650, an increase of £30,379. The number of stamps issued of the denominations Jd., Id., and 2d. in the year 1900—that is, the year prior to the introduction of the universal penny—was 60,257,760, while for last year the total was 69,782,358, an increase of 9,530,000. I should like also to remark that the expenditure of the Department is less now than it was twenty years ago, the appropriation for the year 1884-5 having been £30,571, while that for last year was only £28,000. PUBLIC HEALTH. The wisdom of the passing of " The Public Health Act, 1900," has again been illustrated. It has given us a properly organized Department, capable of dealing not only with our internal sanitation, but an effective instrument by which the colony can be safeguarded against disease from oversea. When we bear in mind the cost of dealing with small-pox, and the commercial disorganization which the presence of this disease occasioned in a neighbouring colony, you will, I feel sure, have no hesitation in agreeing with me that the comparatively small sum spent in combating and stamping out the recent outbreak in Christchurch is at once a justification for and a measure of the efficiency of the recently established Department of Public Health. Within a few days of the notification of the first case of small-pox in this colony the. whole thing was well in hand. As a result of the vigorous measures taken, the disease was effectually limited to its first point of appearance, while some thirty thousand people were vaccinated within a fortnight. Again, with regard to that greatest scourge of modern times —-consumption — the war against it is being carried on consistently and successfully. Great additions have been made to the Sanatorium at Cambridge, and already marked benefit has resulted in many cases from the treatment in the open air. The example set by the Government is being followed by private individuals and by some of the friendly societies. Through the legislation of last year powers were given to the various Hospital Boards throughout the colony to erect suitable open-air annexes for the treatment of this disease, and many Boards, I am pleased to say, have already taken advantage of this privilege. A disease which yearly in Great Britain alone claims more victims than did the Boer War, long and arduous as it was, is one which we, in common with the greater world outside, must strenuously light. Competent critics have declared that nowhere, not even in America, has a finer weapon been forged wherewith to meet the enemy than that situated on the crest of the Maungakawa hills. For this work in preventive measures I think we may safely take not a little credit to ourselves, and the cost of this Department, details of which are given in the estimates, is a mere cipher as compared with the direct monetary saving, and with so much sickness, death, and sorrow obviated.