840

You will be requested to pass an Ordinance enabling the Provincial Government to relieve the Road Boards of the management of main trunk roads.

The Fencing Ordinance has been found to work imperfectly, and requires remodelling. And I shall request your sanction to a few other measures of general interest, although of comparatively minor importance.

During the Session I trust to receive your sanction for the erection of bridges over the Hurunui and Waitangi; one-half the cost in each case being offered by the adjoining provinces. Government is also contemplating the erection of bridges over some other of the larger and more dangerous rivers intersecting the Southern Plains, and probably you will be asked, on an early day, to authorise their construction.

With considerable reason the settlers of the south have complained, during some years past, of inattention to their demands for Public Works. I believe you will concur in the propriety of at once, and in future, awarding to the Timaru District a full proportion of the public revenues. With your assent it is purposed to hand over to the Municipal Council of Timaru the steam landing service and warehouses, with all the boats, gear and appliances.

The presence in the Council of an increased number of representatives from the Goldfields is justly a subject for general congratulation, as being evidence of the serious desire of our fellow-subjects on the West Coast to contribute their valuable assistance towards the government of this Province, and to become permanently identified with all its fortunes.

There will be laid before you a plan for enabling the settlers in Westland to become purchasers of rural lands, and also regulations for the sale of lands within the limits of the towns in that district.

I shall request you to confer upon me powers to expend considerable sums of money in opening up the amazing resources of Westland, by means of various Public Works throughout its districts.

Among other measures, I shall invite your concurrence in a Bill for leasing the Coalfields of the Grey to a public company, under conditions calculated to ensure large commercial benefits to the Province.

During the recess an extension of the western telegraph from Hokitika to Greymouth has been completed at a moderate cost, and I purpose taking authority for some very desirable extensions in a southerly direction.

With regard to the condition of the Province generally, I am hopeful that, with your assistance, Government will succeed in meeting all its present engagements, and completing all those works which have been commenced. But at the same time it cannot be concealed that the extraordinary drain upon our resources in favour of the Northern Island has, during the last few years, very materially affected our powers of sustaining large public expenditure in reproductive works.

Under these circumstances, it will be imperatively necessary to exercise the most watchful precaution against incurring financial embarrassments, and at the same time employ ourselves in preparing plans for a more rapid progress when the southern Provinces have recovered from the comparative prostration into which they have been thrown by their misalliance with the Northern Island.

I may be permitted to express a confident hope that, by some fitting measure of the General Legislature, the Middle Island will speedily be relieved from a pressure which is not only unnecessary but unendurable.

Recent events in Hawke’s Bay, added to a dozen parallel facts, prove very conclusively that the Provincial Governments of the Northern Island, if let alone, and relieved from the pressure of the southern interference in Native affairs, are, with their own resources, capable of reducing the Native population to a condition of usefulness and contented