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ing for the payments of the members of the Legislature, who are entrusted with the public purse. If the Session had not been so long protracted I would have returned the Bill to you for amendment; but considering that all the salaries to which it relates are provided for in the Estimates, and that no alteration will be made in the payments for the present year, I thought you would probably agree with me that the subject had better stand over for reconsideration to another session.

It is a matter of very great congratulation to me, that the measures which you have passed tend to complete and confirm the line of policy which I laid before you when we commenced our duties in 1853.

The Diversion of Roads Bill, read along with the Roads Bill of last year, constitutes a law for the Province respecting roads, which will be most valuable, and of which I believe, as time goes on, the public generally will gladly avail themselves. The plan of making the justices of the peace the sole arbitrators of the damage done by taking new and necessary lines of Road through private properties, is strictly in accordance with English Law, in cases where the amounts in arbitration are small. Such will be the case with almost all alterations of roads in this Province. When interests of great magnitude are likely to be affected by the law, it may be desirable, at some future time to reconsider it. We shall then have had the advantage of seeing how it has worked with the most simple machinery which can be provided.

I am especially gratified that an Education Bill has been passed before the term of my office expires; not that I wholly approve of that measure, but that it is a very great improvement upon the former plan, and that it gives stability and permanency to a system of Education. For this reason alone it gave me great pleasure to assent to this law.

I am greatly gratified that you finally decided to establish permanent agencies in the Australian Colonies, and to establish a postal communication with Melbourne. I fully believe that you will find the Province amply repaid by this expenditure at the end of a year.

Equally glad I am, Gentlemen, that you have determined to adhere, in the appropriation of the sum voted for

Immigration, to the terms of the Immigration Act. I entirely agree with those who think it is possible to spend that sum unwisely, and even that it may prove too large a sum to spend in one year. On the other hand, it is possible, and not at all unlikely, that three years hence, the Province may determine to spend forty thousand instead of four thousand pounds in the service of Immigration. The rapidity with which labor should be introduced depends solely on the rapidity with which capital is introduced or accumulates in the country, and so far as I know, upon nothing else; and no one in a new country can foresee for three years, or even for one year, what the economical conditons of the colony will be. For this reason I believe you will always do wisely to place at the disposal of the Government every year, even a larger sum than you think is likely to be wanted, in the full confidence that a rash use will not be made of it. With regard to the sum you have voted for the present year, I have the most entire conviction that long before it can possibly be spent, the Province will call for the expenditure of still larger sums, to provide for the demand for labor merely to carry on the ordinary occupations of the Colony—to till the land which has been bought, to shear the flocks, and to make the indispensably necessary roads. And I say this, Gentlemen, from my own experience of the available labor in the Colony during the last four years, of which the Government contracts afford a very good index.

Gentlemen, you have done me the honor to reiterate a request made to me by a great number of the electors of the Province, that I would myself undertake the Immigration Agency in England. I certainly did not think that it would be worth while sending home an Agent at so great a cost merely to spend the small sums specified in your resolutions—but, gentlemen, if the Government of this Province be about to undertake the work of real colonization for the next three or four years, I shall be glad to resume again the labors which I underwent in 1850, as one of the most active Agents in the colonization of this country; and I earnestly hope with similar success.

The Council is aware that the loan which I was authorized to raise some months ago has not yet been raised.