190

Auckland Provincial Government Gazette.

plete that I feel confident he would, in after years, have looked back with pleasure upon the public intercourse which had taken place between him, myself, and those who were present at our deliberations.

You state that the Abolition Bill represents the will of the people of the colony. Last session, you, as the then Premier, prevented its people from expressing fairly an opinion upon the subject. You declined, on a great Constitutional question of this kind, to allow any useful appeal to be made to the constituencies of the country.

But there is another serious error on this point. A people with a legislature of its own cannot, without their own consent, have that legislature destroyed and their liberties annihilated by other persons who have no right in law to do this, and the greater part of whom have also no knowledge of the wants, necessities, or desires of the people whom they are depriving of rights which all men but the basest have everywhere valued.

A perusal of the Commission of the Governor, authorising him to summon, prorogue, or dissolve any legislative body now, or to be hereafter established in this colony, would seem to show that her Majesty never intended her Governor to abolish legislatures she had graciously caused to be established here.

Any Provincial Council in New Zealand is no more dependent upon the General Assembly than that legislature is upon the British Parliament. The laws of the General Assembly can over-ride those of any Provincial Council, and the laws of the British Parliament over-ride those of the General Assembly; yet that great British Parliament, so illustrious for its actions, its laws, and its wisdom, and so powerful, would not venture to rob so weak and comparatively unimportant a legislature as the General Assembly of New Zealand of one iota of its rights, much less would it dare, such is its wise and prudent respect for constitutional rights, to give the example of abolishing it and destroying it, without its own consent to such action having been previously obtained, and the shadow of its authority should fall on us, and the General Assembly, following the great and generous example thus given to it, should not venture to destroy or abolish the Provincial Council of this Province, without first obtaining the consent of that Legislature.

The people of Auckland cannot, therefore, have their legislature taken from them against their will. They have yet had no opportunity of expressing their views upon this subject. If the federation established by the British Parliament, and now existing in this Colony, is abolished by the General Assembly, it will then be for the people of Auckland, when they know what is to be set up in place of the Constitution which the Queen, Lords, and Commons of Great Britain bestowed upon this Colony, to determine whether they will or will not accept what is offered to them in place of that Constitution, and whether, abandoning their existing rights, they will enter under the new form of Government proposed to them.

As the elected Superintendent of this province, charged to provide with the Provincial Legislature for its peace, order, and good government, it will be my duty, if such a time arrives as to render it necessary for the people to make a choice upon the subject, to take care that they have the most unrestricted liberty, by representatives properly chosen, of expressing their will upon it. To that effect must necessarily be given, but I ought not to submit to the rights they have under the existing Constitution being violently taken from them against their consent and until they are satisfied (and this is a most important point) that the past and prospective financial wrongs they have suffered, or may suffer, under any new form of government are to be justly compensated. At the present crisis, they hold in their hands the power of obtaining justice in these respects as a condition precedent to their relinquishing the rights which the law now secures to them.

You must remember that their revenues are raised from themselves, and are their own, and that the General Assembly has been authorised to raise those revenues for certain specific purposes, and to carry on a Constitution established by law. If the Constitution so established, under which, and for the support of which, those revenues have been raised, is destroyed, then the revenues would necessarily appear to become the property of the people here, and it will be for themselves, and not for a Parliament constituted to carry out a totally different Constitution, to which the people of this province may not have assented, to receive and to expend those revenues. You will see, therefore, how necessary it is that the inhabitants of this Province should, after they have been informed of the precise nature of the new Constitution which it is intended to impose upon them, give their intelligent assent to it before they relinquish the great liberties they now enjoy.

If you will not agree to the appropriations out of the revenues of this Province, which I, as its Superintendent may make, being openly appropriated, I shall refrain from making any recommendations for the appropriation of such revenues.

The time has now come when the people of this Province must accustom themselves to make pecuniary sacrifices for great public principles. A habit of taking what can be got for fear of suffering loss, rather than the system of refusing anything but what is lawful and right, has led to great losses to the Province of Auckland. We must, therefore, say, "We will have what we are entitled to, and that, accompanied by all the becoming incidents of law and constitutional principles; we will have nothing else, and we will take it in no other way. It will be only a small pecuniary sacrifice to wait for two or three months for the small pittance now offered to us. It would be a serious moral sacrifice to aid in secretly appropriating the least portion of the revenues taken from us by taxation." From apparently small sacrifices of principles constantly repeated, a system may be established which would render it easy to plunder and deeply injure the interests of the people. I consider that, in advising the people to part with their lawful and constitutional rights, in order to secure an expenditure of public money, I should not act as wrongly as if I advised a man to accept a bribe on condition of neglecting his duty.

Did I accept an appropriation of public money on the conditions you offer, I believe, from the delays which have already taken place, that probably the money obtained would not be expended until after a longer delay than will occur from the course I intend to pursue; but, whether this may be the case or not, I believe that the whole Province will support me in the course I have thought it my duty to pursue, and that the very men who may temporarily suffer from the want of employment they may have hoped to gain, will feel pride in submitting to inconvenience in support of a principle which they will recognise as a great and true one, will learn that there is a pleasure in making a sacrifice for the maintenance of public rights, and will hereafter value more dearly privileges which they have purchased by a personal loss.

I have, &c.,

G. GREY.

The Hon. Dr. Pollen,
Colonial Secretary, Auckland.