✨ Provincial Council Opening Speech
NEW ZEALAND
GOVERNMENT GAZETTE.
PROVINCE OF CANTERBURY.
Published by Authority.
All Public Notifications which appear in this Gazette, with any Official Signature, are to be considered as Official Communications made to those persons to whom they may relate, and are to be obeyed accordingly.
By His Honor's command,
RICHARD PACKER,
Provincial Secretary.
VOL. IV.] WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8, 1857. [No. VII.
Provincial Secretary's Office,
Christchurch, April 2, 1857.
HIS Honor the Superintendent opened the Provincial Council this day with the following speech :—
Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the Provincial Council,—
In opening your Council for the last time I cannot forbear asking you to survey the four years which have elapsed since your duties commenced, and to examine what has been done during that time.
You will remember that although almost unprecented success had attended the Settlement, which had then been formed less than three years, yet we commenced our duties in a community in which there were no existing establishments, or even traditions of Government: in which everything had to be created and organised from the beginning; and with an exchequer so absolutely empty, that we had to borrow a small sum in order to make the first payments of salaries. The settlement was then at a stand. The operations of the Canterbury Association were at an end—Immigration had ceased—Public Works had been abandoned—and there were looming in the distance, questions, such as the settlement of our relations with the Canterbury Association, and the adjustment of the Land question, to which no one could look without some anxiety.
I may indeed congratulate you on the change which has taken place since that time. Our population, our trade and our Revenues, are steadily increasing; our exports have increased so largely as to promise, and at no distant date, to balance the imports; whilst in the formation of new homesteads, in the cultivation of the land, in the increase of stock, in the accumulation of wealth and the advancement of civilization and comfort of every description, the same remarkable progress exhibits itself in every direction. You may without vanity, Gentlemen, claim a share of the credit due to the prosperity of the Province for which you have legislated; for however difficult it may be sometimes to trace the immediate influence of good or bad government upon the social condition of a commu—
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Canterbury Provincial Gazette 1857, No 7
✨ LLM interpretation of page content
🏘️ Opening of the Provincial Council by the Superintendent
🏘️ Provincial & Local Government2 April 1857
Provincial Council, Christchurch, Superintendent, Speech, Canterbury Province
- Richard Packer, Provincial Secretary