I have presumed that it will suit your convenience on the present occasion if matters requiring lengthy consideration are postponed for a Session to be held in the autumn, and accordingly only such appropriations as it may be deemed advisable to make, and such proposals as require your immediate attention will now be submitted to you.

In compliance with the opinion expressed by you that it is desirable that the Provincial Treasurer should be a member of the Executive, and have a seat in the Council, a Member of the Council has been appointed to the office, and has become a Member of the Executive Council.

The Estimates of Receipts and Expenditure for the ensuing nine months will be brought before you without delay. In considering these the altered position of the Province under the financial changes effected by the colonial legislation of last Session, will require your careful attention.

From the first day of October last the General Government has taken upon itself the construction of the Northern and Southern Lines of Railway, and a refund of the amount previously expended by the Provincial Government on those works has, with some deductions, been made to the Provincial Government.

It is believed that the Northern Line will be open for traffic as far as Kaiapoi before the end of next month, and the terms on which the line will be worked in connection with the existing lines are now under the consideration of the Colonial and Provincial Governments. I hope to be able to place the conditions which may be proposed before you in a few days.

By recent legislation railways to the North, as far as the Kowai, and to the South to the Temuka, meeting the line previously sanctioned from Timaru to Temuka, have been authorised. You will agree with me that to secure the successful working of the Northern Line it should be pressed on without delay as far as Leithfield, so as to serve the interests of the large settled district north of the Ashley; and that to derive the greatest benefit from the extension to the South the line should be taken to the Ashburton, as previously intended by you, as quickly as material can be obtained for its construction.

Provision has also been made by “The Railways Act, 1871,” for the construction, with some modifications, of the Branch Lines, as recommended by you, on the condition of the Province providing a sum of £42,000, as against a sum of £150,350 to be provided by the General Government; and I am given to understand that these works will be put in hand without delay. You will be asked to make the necessary appropriations of Provincial funds for this purpose.

By “The Immigration and Public Works Act, 1871,” the provisions of the 39th and 41st sections of the former Act, under which the Superintendent was consulted as to the numbers and classes of immigrants to be introduced into any Province, and as to the mode of settlement of such immigrants, are repealed, and it is enacted that the Governor may exercise all the powers and do and perform all the acts, matters, and things in the said sections mentioned, without any request from any Superintendent of any Province or any other person or authority. And by the other sections of the same Act a power is given to the Colonial Government by which the existing Land Laws of the Province are made subject to the will of that Government, in respect of so much of the Waste Lands of the Province as may be considered necessary to enable it to give effect to the provisions of the Act.

It is needless for me to point out to how great an extent the exercise of such powers must sooner or later interfere with the administration of the Waste Lands under the laws previously existing, the initiation of which has hitherto rested with the Provincial Legislature, nor how largely this Province is likely to be affected as compared with most of the other Provinces of the Colony.