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£35,499 0s. 9d.; and on the Southern line from £5839 11s. 9d. to £10,484 1s. 0d. I mention this as showing the steady increase of traffic, and not as indicating any opinion that it is desirable for the country to make a revenue out of its railways. My own opinion is in a different direction. I should wish to see not only the cost of carriage by land reduced to the lowest possible point, but a large reduction of all port and wharfage charges. This would be possible by the endowment in land of a Harbour Trust, to meet the interest on the Harbour Works Loan. Such a policy would obviously have a more than Provincial bearing. I have here to allude to the difficulty which exists in meeting the increased traffic on the railway with the existing appliances. The difficulty is rendered greater, partly owing to the transition state of the lines in respect of the width of gauge, and partly owing to the large quantity of railway material which is being carried the full length of the lines. The subject will, no doubt, have your careful consideration. Personally, I am of opinion that the best professional advice should be taken, through a Commission to be appointed for the purpose, as to the arrangements to be adopted hereafter to meet the necessity which has been forced upon us by the Colonial Legislature.

The general diffusion of Education throughout the population is shown not only by the number of schools which are springing up, even in the remotest districts of the Province, but by the steadily increasing numbers of those attending them. Since the year 1869, the numbers attending the public schools have been more than doubled, the total number attending in the last September quarter of 1873 being 6816. Your determination to make the social and intellectual progress of the Province keep pace with its material prosperity was strikingly shown by the liberality of your provisions last year for all the Educational Institutions. The sum actually spent on Education has grown from £7445 19s. 7d. in 1870, to £26,480 9s. 1d. in the present year, when your appropriations for school buildings alone, including the Normal and Municipal Schools, amounted to more than £50,000. A contract has been entered into for the erection of the Normal School at a cost of £11,280. A Report showing the advance made towards the establishment of the College and Public Library will be laid before you. It has been thought advisable to postpone the additions to the Museum for the present until greater facilities for building are available. You will be asked to re-vote the unexpended balance for which engagements have been incurred for the erection of School Buildings, with a considerable additional amount for the current year. In the permanent interests of the country, I know of no more advantageous expenditure than that which I now propose, and which you have hitherto so liberally sanctioned. I should fail in my duty if I omitted to take this occasion to express my high sense of the unremitting zeal and industry which is brought to bear upon the department by the Board of Education.

Though a meeting of a new Council and Superintendent will most probably take place before the winter, I shall ask you to make liberal appropriation to the Road Boards, to enable them to commence operations so soon as the harvest is over. In view of the extension of the railways and of the large immigration which, I am informed, is contemplated by the Colonial Government, it is of the greatest importance that the construction of roads should be pressed on throughout all districts of the Province. In your appropriations for this object you will no doubt be mindful of the fact that a large proportion of the funds in hand is not recurring revenue, but capital entrusted to the Legislature for the purpose of opening up communication with the lands from which it is derived, and that the high price which is received for our land is, in fact, a capitalising of taxation, which would otherwise fall over a lengthened period upon the purchasers of waste lands.

In anticipation of the works which it will be necessary to put in hand in the early autumn, I shall ask you to authorise a more considerable vote than heretofore for plantations on public reserves. The improvement of the public estate in this way appears to me of great importance.