164 Auckland Provincial Government Gazette.

has already been made that you return to the Ohine-
muri miners’ rights, like Mr. Dick to the head of
Charles the First. I am glad to learn that your
Honor does not intend to address me in future
on constitutional questions, although I am not with-
out regret for the fate you design for his Excellency.
From several sources I have heard that your Honor
has expressed the opinion that Lord Normanby
would be the last Imperial Governor appointed to
New Zealand. I feared your Honor expected some
dreadful recollection, and it is a great relief now to
think that you only suppose your letters to the
Governor will deter anyone from accepting in future
a similar (position?). I shall send you the figures
separately. I deal with the expenditure authorised
by law. It appears to me your Honor considers
that the laws should be as a minority of one approves,
for sometimes you uphold, at other times you rail
against them.

Julius Vogel.

(21o.) Auckland, 31st March, 187
To Hon. Sir Julius Vogel, K.C.M.G., M.G.A,
Wellington.

I feel real sorrow that you should have derived
amusement from transactions of so sad a nature as
those you allude to. Your Government is so largely
responsible for them, that I am certain they ought to
have filled you with a righteous indignation. I know,
however, that there are many men of high and gener-
ous minds here whom the expression of such senti-
ments as you use will only nerve to the ennobling
purpose of struggling to the last to free themselves
from all chance of such evils for the future. You
eredit me with prophetic utterances I never made,
and could not have made. I do not know what the
term Imperial Governor means in the way in which
you use it. The conclusion of my last telegram points
out distinctly enough that my object was to secure
the Governor from submitting to see the powers of
the Crown abused for wrong purposes. At present
the governors of colonies are nominated by the
English Minister of the hour for political or
other objects, and the Crown is necessarily required
to approve such nomination. Even in my life-
time, companies or other bodies have in such manner
nominated Governors or Lieutenant-Governors
for the Crown’s approval. Neither you nor I can know
that our Sovereign might not rather have to approve
the appointment of a Governor chosen by the entire
people here, and thus endear herself to all her sub-
jects by allowing them to select the man they deemed
most worthy, rather than a Governor perhaps chosen
for political or personal objects by a Minister whose
policy she might distrust. Such a choice by her
people here would open great hopes and worthy
aspirations, which must benefit the entire population.
The Queen graciously allows the election of Super-
intendents to govern provinces instead of nominated
Lieutenant-Governors. Her Majesty has also given
her subjects here the power of determining, by a law
to be assented to by herself, the manner in which her
Governors here should be nominated for her approval.
If you have a right to entertain your opinion, that a
nobleman nominated by a Minister with the title of
Imperial Governor is the desirable mode of this
being done, you may surely allow me to hold my
opinion on the subject without offering unseemly
taunts.

G. Grey.

(22o.) Wellington, March 30th, 1876.
His Honor Sir George Grey,
Auckland.

I now send to your Honor the figures explanatory
of Auckland’s financial position, which have been
taken from the report of the Provincial Auditor:—
Ordinary Provincial revenue licenses, £13,000 (these
the Government relinquish when Abolition takes
place); from other sources, £11,320; ordinary land
revenue, £1, besides £140 retained to pay salaries;
confiscated lands, £766; goldfields and wharfage,
£8,000; total, £33,087. Whilst for interest and
sinking fund on purely Provincial loans, irrespective
of the interest on the capitalised cost of the Auckland
and Mercer Railway, the Province was liable for
£41,900, or £8,813 more than its entire revenue.
Comment is needless. Nothing can be more clear
than the liability of the Province for provincial loans.

Under these circumstances, with a purely Provincial
revenue of £33,000, and a balance in hand of
£2,300, the Province, with the assistance of the
Colonial revenue, managed to spend about £143,000,
including £41,900 for interest above referred to.
That assistance consisted of £70,000 capitation
allowance, £29,000 special advances, and £2,000 for
education—in addition to £17,000 out of loan for
Thames Pumping Association. Besides the assistance
thus rendered, the Colonial Government expended
out of loan on railways, roads, water supply, land
purchases, public buildings, and immigration—all
more or less Provincial objects—sums amounting to
£445,000. Now with regard to Auckland having
its own revenue: Assuming that Auckland had the
whole of the consolidated revenue raised within the
Province, as well as its purely Provincial revenue,
and were charged with its proportion of the
total expenditure for General Government de-
partmental services and its proportion of the
interest and sinking fund paid by the Colony
(that is to say, the interest paid by the General
Government, exclusive of the sums at present
charged provincially on provincial loans and railways),
each calculated on population basis, and had further
to pay interest on its own loans and on the cost of
its railways, it would still be far from being able to
meet current provincial expenditure. Thus consoli-
dated revenue collected in the province, £341,000;
provincial revenue, £33,000; balance in hand,
£2,300. Total, £376,300. On the other side, the
province’s share of colonial charges, departmental,
£175,000; interest and sinking fund, £143,000;
making £318,000; interest on cost of Auckland and
Mercer railway, £11,000; interest on provincial
loans, £41,900; provincial expenditure, £80,000;
making a total of £450,900, and leaving a deficit of
£74,600, which, in other words, means that Auckland
has received out of revenues £74,600 more than by
strict computation it was entitled to, leaving the
other provinces to suffer proportionately.

Julius Vogel.

(23o.) Auckland, 3rd April, 1876.
To Hon. Colonial Treasurer,
Wellington.

Payments to Provinces Act, 1871. Capitation
Allowance was to be paid from 1st July, 1871, to
30th June, 1872, by the number of the population
for the year, population to be based upon returns of
population contained in the Census return to Febru-
ary, 1871. The population by that return was
62,335, but the return was made five months before
the year commenced. The words used are “to be
based upon” not “determined by” or “to be taken
to be” as in the same or other Acts. The population
in December, 1871, the middle point of the year
for which the Capitation allowance was to be paid,
was 64,332. The increase for the next six months