123

Various other appropriations will be recommended to you for works which on many accounts can advantageously be pressed on during the winter months.

I have to congratulate you on the completion of the Northern Railway as far as Kaiapoi, which will be open for passenger traffic in a few days. The line has been laid down in a most substantial manner, with bridges, culverts, and other works of a permanent character. I am only doing justice to the members of my Government, who cordially co-operated with me in initiating this Railway, and to those officers of the Provincial Government who have given their zealous and unremitting attention to the execution of the work, in taking this opportunity of recording the high sense I entertain of the services rendered by them.

The total cost of the line to Rangiora will, when complete, amount to about £76,000, exclusive of the purchase of land, or at a rate slightly in excess of £4000 per mile.

The economical and efficient manner in which this work has been devised and executed, is, in my opinion, an example of the advantage to be derived from the employment by the Colony of local management in the execution of works provided for by borrowed moneys.

I cannot but think that further experience will tend in the same direction.

In this Province, the existing railways enable it to construct and administer further lines at a less cost than any other portion of the Colony.

The attempt of recent legislation to bring under one central administration those works and colonising operations which have hitherto been carried out more immediately with the sympathy, and under the supervision and direction, of those by whose taxation the funds are supplied, will, I think, prove a costly experiment, if a double machinery for the same objects is to be maintained.

The impossibility of administering works and immigration in this island from Wellington appears to have been already admitted by the appointment of a member of the Colonial Ministry for this purpose to reside in Canterbury.

The taxpayers of the Colony will not long admit of the continuance of an unnecessary complication of Government.

Either the step already taken by the Colonial Government is but preliminary to a separate system of administration and finance in either island, or to a change in the position of the Provinces. If to the latter, the change must shortly take the form of the definition of powers of the Provinces, and a utilisation of them as agents in the promotion of colonisation and public works, or it must issue in their abolition.

When I last met you, I indicated what I considered to be the points in the Colonial legislation of last Session which most nearly concerned us as a Province, especially the power of interference with the administration of the waste lands and the conduct of immigration— independently of any expression of opinion on the part of the local legislatures.

The changes which have been brought about have been effected in a Legislature in which the Provinces, as such, have not been represented, and hitherto, so far as I am aware, without any expression of opinion as to their expediency by the several Provincial Legislatures.

You will not think it out of place in me on the present occasion to have again called your attention to a subject of such large importance to this Province.