27

Colonial Secretary\'s Office,
Auckland, 27th November, 1856.

SIR,–
I have to acknowledge the receipt of your Honor\'s letter of the 8th ult., reporting that you had, under the Canterbury Provincial Empowering Ordinance, appointed William Guise Brittan, Esquire, to be a Resident Magistrate, and requesting that the Governor would be pleased to issue a Commission to that gentleman.

In reply I have to state that, if your Honor possesses the power of appointing a Resident Magistrate, the Government of New Zealand does not think it advisable that a Commission should also be issued by the Governor in the case of such an appointment.

I have the honor to be,
Sir,
Your Honor\'s very obedient servant,
(Signed) E. W. STAFFORD.
His Honor the Superintendent,
Canterbury, &c., &c.

Superintendent\'s Office,
Christchurch, Dec. 10, 1856.

SIR,–
I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 27th Nov., 1856, in reply to mine of the 8th Oct., on the subject of appointing Mr. Guise Brittan to be a Resident Magistrate, from which I understand his Excellency\'s Government decline to issue a Commission to that gentleman.

It is true that the Empowering Ordinance of Canterbury purports to give to the Superintendent the power of appointing Resident Magistrates within that Province. It is also true that that power has been exercised from time to time during the last four years. But his Excellency\'s Government are aware that doubts in certain quarters have been expressed as to whether the jurisdiction of the Provincial Legislature extends to interfering with such appointments. I have never myself entertained a doubt upon that point, but the doubt having been expressed in influential quarters, is sufficient to deter any gentleman from acting under the commission of the Superintendent, and thereby incurring the serious risks which he would run, where such doubts to prove to have legal validity.

His Excellency\'s late Government voluntarily undertook to quiet those doubts by advising His Excellency to issue a Commission, in cases in which I had appointed. I therefore applied to have the same course pursued in the present instance.

Since writing my despatch of the 8th of October, I have acquainted His Excellency that Mr. Tancred has resigned his offices and that I have appointed Mr. Hall in his room. It is probable that both Mr. Brittan and Mr. Hall, to whom I shall feel it my duty to communicate this correspondence, will refuse to act. There will, therefore, so far as I can perceive, be no Court of Law of any description whatever in the Province of Canterbury for the two months.

The responsibility of this must rest entirely with His Excellency\'s Government, which instead of aiding, in a case of great doubt, to maintain the administration of Justice, has taken a course I beg respectfully to submit to His Excellency calculated to produce results of the most serious kind. If His Excellency\'s Government, charged as they are with maintaining the Government of the Country, and respect for the Law, were advised that the Superintendent\'s Commission to a Resident Magistrate was invalid, I submit that not an hour should have been lost in clearing up all doubts on the subject by a legislative enactment of the General Assembly. But your despatch under reply, I regret to say, seems to have no other effect than to confirm, by the deliberate sanction of His Excellency\'s Government, a state of confusion and doubt as to the jurisdiction of the local courts of law.

I have the honor to be, Sir,
Your very obedient servant,
(Signed)
JAMES EDWARD FITZ GERALD,
Superintendent of
Canterbury.

Colonial Secretary\'s Office,
Auckland, Feb. 11th, 1857.

SIR,–
I have the honour to reply to your letter No. 47, of the 10th December, last, referring to the refusal of the Government to issue a Commission to Mr. Brittan, whom your Honour had previously appointed, under the Canterbury Empowering Ordinance, to be a Resident Magistrate.

Before announcing the principle by which the Government is guided in determining to refuse to issue Commissions in cases of like character to the one in question, it is necessary that I should especially notice the