NEW ZEALAND

GOVERNMENT GAZETTE,

(PROVINCE OF WELLINGTON.)

Published by Authority.

All Public Notifications which appear in this Gazette, with any Official Signatures thereto annexed, are to be considered as Official Communications made to those Persons to whom they relate, and are to be obeyed accordingly.

J. WOODWARD,
Acting Provincial Secretary.

VOL. IX.] WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 1862. [No. 12]

SPEECH OF HIS HONOR THE SUPERINTENDENT OF WELLINGTON DELIVERED

ON THE OPENING OF THE SECOND SESSION OF THE THIRD PROVINCIAL COUNCIL,

APRIL 25th, 1862.

Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the Provincial Council,—

In your last Session you passed an address to the Representatives of this Province in the General Assembly, in which, after thanking them for the course they had pursued in reference to the Taranaki war, you urged them, "to use their utmost exertions to obtain the establishment of such a wise, humane, and equitable policy by the General Government towards the aboriginal inhabitants of these Islands, as would ensure the continuance of peaceful relations between the two races, and the future prosperity of the Colony."

It will scarcely be expected that I should open this Session without offering you my heartfelt congratulations upon the changes that have taken place since we last met—upon our having escaped the dangers that then impended over us, and upon the prospect there now is of your hopes being fully realised.

Though at the time you voted that address a truce had been arranged between the Government and the Natives, still no change had taken place either in the policy or intentions of the then Governor and his advisers. They agreed to a suspension of arms in a moment of panic, and only waited for reinforcements and the sanction of the Imperial Government to make an aggressive movement, which must at once have brought on a general war—a war which according to their own admission, must have swept away the hard earned fruits of twenty years of colonization, and could only have been brought to a close by the extermination of the Native Race.

The dangers to which you, in common with the whole population of this Island were then exposed, will only be fully understood and appreciated when the correspondence between the late Governor and the Home Government, and the resolutions of the Secret Committees of the two Houses have been made public. But, nevertheless, when you remember that the war was commenced when there was only a force of a few hundred men at the disposal of the Government—that even when the forces (military and naval) had been augmented to above 5000, the Governor and his Ministers found themselves too weak to fire "that shot in the Waikato country which was to be the signal of a general rising of the Natives"—that they still begged and prayed for further reinforcements; and when you further consider that upon your Representatives protesting against his striking the blow until some sort of protection to the settlers had been provided, the late Governor admitted that even if he had 20,000 men at his command, he could not do more than defend the three or four centres of population; and that therefore all the settlers beyond the precincts of the garrisoned towns must be prepared to submit to the sacrifice,