Auckland Provincial Government Gazette.

189

wharf at Mangapai, in the Electoral District of Marsden, and a sum of £400 for the erection of a wharf at Matakana, in the Electoral District of Rodney, for neither of which services had appropriation been made by the Auckland Provincial Council, required careful consideration, regard being had to the financial condition of the Provincial Government; your Honor will be advised as soon as a decision has been arrived at. The exigency of the case in respect to the wharves did not appear to demand the instant attention of Ministers as did that of the temporary distress at the Thames, and I hope that your Honor will accept this explanation as sufficiently accounting for the delay which has taken place in dealing finally with the wharf question, and answering your letters.

Before replying to the request with which your Honor concludes the letter now before me, I desire to point out some errors into which you appear to have fallen. Your Honor’s hypothesis that I am determined “to understand the Provincial Appropriations Extension Act of last session in the sense that the Governor and the Superintendent alone are to agree upon the expenditure of the Provincial revenues, and that the money so expended should be deemed to have been appropriated by the Legislature of the Province, whilst the Executive Council will not aid in the matter” is fallacious. I have arrived at no such determination. The “remarks” thereupon, which you kindly offer for my consideration, are therefore not appropriate.

Your Honor is pleased also to say that this Government “have professed to prevent you from convening the Provincial Council for the purpose of constitutionally providing for the expenditure of their revenues.” The 95th section of the Abolition of Provinces Act, 1875, enacts, “That it shall not be lawful for the Superintendent of any province to convene the Provincial Council thereof, or for any Provincial Council to meet in session before the day next after the last day of the first session of the next or sixth Parliament of New Zealand.” This Act, as your Honor knows, was passed by overwhelming majorities in both Houses of the General Assembly in last session, and it is the will of the people of the Colony thus expressed through their representatives that restrains you in this matter, and not merely the will of Government.

Your Honor says, “You now tell me that these revenues, contributed by the taxation of upwards of 73,000 people, are to be expended at the discretion of two persons—the Governor and myself—and by our mutual agreement, secretly, in breach, I may say, of every law and traditional custom of the Empire, and of rights which ought to be most dearly cherished by the people of this Province.” I have nowhere told your Honor anything of the kind; the contingency which you picture, imaginatively, fills me with constitutional horror. I am fully persuaded that if your Honor had been asked to undertake such duties, you would certainly not discharge them; but as your Honor has not been asked, the expression of your objections to such “an unconstitutional and improper proceeding,” as you term it, is at least premature.

I regret very much that your Honor has failed to understand a subject which appears so simple; the terms of the Provincial Appropriation Extension Act are explicit, and must be observed if any action is desired to be taken under it; no difficulty has arisen in any other province but this, or with any other Superintendent in carrying them out in practice.

With regard to your request that I should advise the Governor to arrange meetings with you “for the purpose of agreeing on the necessary expenditure, to which meetings the public and the representatives of the press may be admitted,” I would respectfully remind your Honor that this is happily no longer “a Crown Colony, of a severe type,” in which such a course of dealing with Her Majesty’s representative might have been desirable. His Excellency has responsible advisers accountable to Parliament, and is a constitutional Governor, “thoroughly acquainted with the traditional customs of the Empire, and who discharges his high functions with scrupulous observance of, and fidelity to, constitutional customs, and who is at all times easily accessible to those who desire to see him, and I feel assured that if I could be induced to offer such advice as you suggest, his Excellency would decline to accept the challenge to single combat in presence of ‘the public and representatives of the press,’ which your Honor so chivalrously offers. The question, whether or not your Honor shall be authorised to erect wharves at Mangapai and Matakana, for which there has been no appropriation, and for which there is no money, admits of an easier solution.

I have, &c.,

DANIEL POLLEN.

His Honor the Superintendent,
Auckland.

Superintendent’s Office,
Auckland, 5th April 1876.

Sir,—

I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter dated the 31st ultimo.

It does not appear to me that you have at all touched the point under consideration, namely, the appropriation of a portion of the revenues contributed from the taxation of 73,000 people by persons from whose deliberations the public are excluded, so that the inhabitants of this Province have no knowledge of the principles on which their revenues are disbursed.

All constitutional practice would throw around me, as the Superintendent of the Province, the right of a fair public discussion of any recommendations for expenditure which I had made, lest malicious individuals might avail themselves of the public ignorance upon this subject to accuse me of a malversation of trust. The same protection should be thrown around the General Government.

I must repeat that, where an Executive Council deals with such subjects as the appropriation of the revenues, the rule has been that its meetings should be open to the public on the occasion when revenues are so disposed of; and the Commission issued by Her Majesty to her Governor makes careful provisions by which this could be most efficiently and satisfactorily done. I understand you, however, now to state positively that this shall not be permitted to be done in the case of the disposal of the revenues of the Province of Auckland.

This resolution on your part forced on me the necessity of proposing, as an alternative, that the Governor and myself should meet for the purpose of openly disposing of the revenues of this Province. Had we so met I feel sure that these meetings would have been of the most friendly and cordial character; that the Governor would have learned much of the necessities and wants of this Province, and would have attached its people to him by the care which he would have evinced that their interests should be properly considered. In all these objects I should have given him an assistance so friendly and so com-