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The importance of making the appropriations which are absolutely required for carrying out such works and providing such accommodation as are necessary for utilising to its fullest extent the large expenditure which has been incurred on the Railway and Harbour Works.

"The reiterated promises of successive Governments in respect of a Railway to the North give the Northern districts claims upon your consideration only second to the necessary works in connection with the Railway to which I have just referred.

"The large amount of land which has been sold in many of the outlying districts, compared with the expenditure upon roads for the conveyance of their largely increasing products, deserves your careful attention.

"You will be asked to grant a sum for providing more ample accommodation for the number of orphans which is now dependent on public charity, and which, from various causes, has been largely increased during the past few years. Apart from other considerations, I need hardly insist upon the importance to the Province of such institutions as the Orphan Asylum being properly and efficiently conducted with all the necessary appliances. At the present time, the buildings in use for this purpose are wholly inadequate, and the expenditure considerably in excess of what would be sufficient to maintain and educate a larger number of children in much greater comfort.

"The benefit of the valuable and in some respects unique collection of geological and other specimens which has been accumulated through the industry and zeal of the late Provincial Geologist, is at present in a great measure lost to the public for the want of a building suitable for its distribution and arrangement.

"The postponing of the building of a museum has, I believe, hitherto been owing to the desire for a more expensive building than the resources of the Province could afford. I venture to recommend to your consideration the advisableness of erecting a cheaper building, which may form the nucleus of a larger group of buildings hereafter, and give the public the immediate advantage of many valuable collections which are at present practically useless.

"It will be a matter of satisfaction to you to learn that, so far as the Government is aware, there has been no spread of the disease pleuro-pneumonia beyond the limits within which active measures were taken to confine it. I have, therefore, thought it right to remove all restrictions and prohibitions from the larger district previously proclaimed as infected, and to confine them to the smaller localities in which disease is known to exist.

"The fall in the price of wool and other causes have combined to maintain the depression under which the colony and the province have laboured for some time past. I have, however, every confidence that an abstinence from speculative undertakings and a steady course of economy, both public and private, will enable the province to recover such a measure of sound prosperity as may be counted upon as of permanent duration.

"You will with me deeply regret the outbreak of another Native war in the North Island, and the lamentable loss of valuable lives which it has entailed; and you will cordially sympathise with those of our fellow-colonists whose lives have been endangered, and whose property has been destroyed. Such disasters as those which have occurred will awaken in all British colonists the desire to do their utmost to assist the sufferers. Up to the present time we are without information as to the course which is intended to be adopted to meet a crisis unparalleled in the history of the colony.