Auckland Provincial Government Gazette.

161

priated a very small part of the funds so pro- vided to the service of this Province. It is the duty of the Colonial Treasury to carry out the directions of the Legislature. The Treasury provides nothing; it has no right to take anything away; it has no power to grant anything. A stoppage, in the sense you use it, means to take away. I ought not to allow the funds of the people of this Province to be un- lawfully taken from them in one direction in order that in another direction they should be made re- cipients of a pecuniary bounty, if they seek it as suppliants, from those who have no right to take away or to give public monies.

It is this mistake as to the legal powers and rights of your Government as regards public funds and lands which has entailed much misfortune on us.

Last year an effort was made by your Government unlawfully to take from us funds to which we were by law entitled. Your Government was on that occasion compelled to give way when the Courts of Law were about to be resorted to.

From the same mistaken view of the law, large sums to which I believe we are lawfully entitled have been withheld from us. Again, in utter disregard by your Government of what were its legal powers, large areas of Crown lands have been attempted to be privately and unlawfully disposed of, as in the case of the Waikato-Piako swamp, to the detriment and wrong of Her Majesty’s subjects at large. In some cases the purchase of Native Lands is delayed, in defiance of the intentions of the Legislature, and of law and equity, that they may be secured to what your Government describes as “capitalists,” to the ruin of a population and of a district which, under another system, would be one of the most wealthy and prosperous in New Zealand.

So manifest is the illegality of the course pursued in these matters, that, even in the case of the Legislature, the dealings with the members of which by the Government should have been above all suspicion, the Government found it necessary, immediately before the dissolution of the last Parliament, to have an Act passed to save some of the members of the Legislative Council and House of Representatives from all the disabilities and penalties they might have incurred under the Disqualification Act of 1870.

At the present moment, after the disclosures made last Session before the Tairua and Ohinemuri Miners’ Rights Committees, I believe your Government is providing funds for the payment of sums of public money to the persons whose conduct was animad- verted upon by those Committees, and your Govern- ment continues to deal with the native lands on principles and in a manner which prevents us from acquiring tracts of territory absolutely necessary to the public welfare and prosperity of this Province.

I therefore feel it incumbent on me to resist, by all lawful means, the doctrine that the Colonial Treasury or your Government provides anything—that we are the recipients of its bounty, or the creatures of its power, from whom it can take anything, or upon whom it can bestow anything. Even if the Courts give a decision on the points I am raising adverse to my views, a great advantage will have been gained by the public discussion of this question. For I cannot agree in your view in favour of a secret settlement of public rights in a Minister’s room by two gentlemen. The rights of the people of this Province have, in my belief, been assailed with a high hand. Its population are intelligent. Let the question be openly settled before them, as it were, in their very presence. They ought to know what their rights are, through whose fault they may be deprived of them, what are the constitutional means by which they may be maintained, and what are the principles upon which they are to be abro- gated or confirmed.

When a people, who believe they are suffering under great wrongs, quietly appeal to the Courts of Law to attempt to have their rights maintained, their action is not rightly described by saying they are wasting money in law expenses.

The memorandum from the Provincial Treasurer you ask for was enclosed to you on the 6th instant.

The Colonial Government might have settled the question now pending by saying they would abide by the agreement they had entered into, and by the law as it is written, until the Assembly, in the manner which it deemed just and right, had corrected its own error if it had made one, which it is not admitted it did.

G. Grey,

Auckland, 13th March, 1876.

(11c.)
To Hon. Colonial Treasurer,
Wellington.

Have just received Treasury account for January shewing credit balance in favour of Province of Auck- land of £4,442 13s. 5d. Please remit the same at once.

G. Grey,

(12c.)
Wellington, 13th March, 1876.
To His Honor Sir George Grey,
Auckland.

In reply to your to-day’s telegram I have to say that your Honor has omitted to look at both sides of the question. The Accountant to the Treasury in- forms me as follows:—“In addition to showing that there was a credit balance on the capitation account for January of £4,442 13s. 5d., the account trans- mitted to Auckland for that month showed that the Province owed £10,620 8s. 11d. for interest on the Auckland and Mercer railway; the February ac- counts, to be rendered shortly, will show that the credit balance referred to in His Honor’s telegram has been applied in part payment of £10,620 8s. 11d.” I can only add that the Commissioners of Audit hold that these stoppages must be made.

Julius Vogel

(13c.)
Wellington, 13th March, 1876.
His Honor Sir George Grey,
Auckland.

Whilst I regret that your Honor is unable to agree with the Solicitor-General as to the pertinency of the cases he instanced to the case in point, I cannot be surprised at it, since it is evident the case has got so mixed up in your mind with a variety of circum- stances over which your Honor has been for months brooding, that no decision could possibly meet your manifold requirements; further discussion is there- fore useless. I am surprised, however, that your Honor fails to perceive the absurdity of the scolding you administer to the Legislature, my colleagues, and myself. I have not time to enter into a political discussion with your Honor, besides that such a discussion, mixed with ordinary business, would form a bad precedent. Again, I am not favourably im- pressed with the systematic manner in which your Honor ignores the fact that, but for the extraneous assistance which the Legislature has enabled the Government to give you, you would be unable to