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246 rest to be included in all contracts for public works. This regulation, enforcing entire cessation of labour on Sundays so far as the Public Works Department was concerned, received the full approval of the Colonial Office (October 8, 1844). Sir John was also supposed to be engaged in wringing from an unwilling Home Government their consent to the early erection of the Colonial Church. Yet building operations were unaccountably delayed from October, 1843, to October, 1846. Great was, therefore, the indignation felt in Hongkong when it became known, through a private letter of Mr. Gladstone (of June 27, 1846), that 'the cause of the delay in the erection of a suitable Church at Hongkong has been the want of any estimate transmitted from the Colony, for without this preliminary step the Treasury will not grant the public money.' It was not till March 11, 1847, that, as stated in a pompous Latin inscription on a brass plate inserted in the foundation stone, 'The corner stone of this Church, dedicated to St. John the Evangelist, and destined for the worship of Almighty God, was laid by Lord J. F. Davis, Baronet, a Legate of the British Queen in China and bedecked with proconsular dignity, on the fifth day of the Ides of March in the tenth year of Queen Victoria, A.D. 1847.' At a meeting of contributors to the Colonial Church fund (April 12, 1847) an additional subscription was raised bringing up the fund to £1,888 and Government now doubled this sum. Two Trustees (Wilkinson Dent and T. D. Neave) were elected by the subscribers, and four others by the Government. During the progress of the building, services were held at the present Court House opposite the Club. A Union Chapel, in connection with the London Mission, and intended for services in the English and Chinese languages, was built in the present Hollywood Road, in spring 1845, by means of a public subscription raised (September 1), 1844) by Dr. Legge. In 1847 and 1848 meetings for Presbyterian worship were held every Sunday in a bungalow immediately behind the present Club House. A mortuary chapel was erected, in 1845, in the new cemetery in the Happy Valley.