✨ Provincial Council opening speech
NEW ZEALAND
GOVERNMENT GAZETTE
(PROVINCE OF NELSON).
Published by Authority.
All Public Notifications which appear in this Gazette, with any Official Signature thereunto annexed, are to be considered as Official Communications made to those Persons to whom they may relate, and are to be obeyed accordingly.
By His Honour's command,
ALFRED DOMETT, Provincial Secretary.
VOL. VII. NELSON, TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 1859. No. 7.
PROVINCIAL COUNCIL.
TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 1859.
The Sixth Session of the Provincial Council was opened at the Council Chamber this day, at one o'clock, upon which occasion his Honour the Superintendent delivered the following Speech :—
MR. SPEAKER AND GENTLEMEN OF THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL—
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It having again become my duty to call you together for the purpose of devoting your attention to the public business of this province, it is with much pleasure that I find myself again enabled to congratulate you on its still increasing prosperity.
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The absence of a single criminal case at the last half-yearly sitting of the Supreme Court again places the province in its usually high moral position, while its material progress is evidenced by its increasing revenue, both ordinary and territorial.
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The estimate of the revenue for the past year, which I had the honour of laying before you during the last session, has, I am happy to inform you, been exceeded to the extent of nearly £8,000. This includes a refund by the General Government of £2,892 8s. 4d.; and the total increase over the previous year, quite irrespective of any sums raised under the Debenture Act, is upwards of £11,000. A comparative statement of the amount of imports and exports for the year ending the 31st December last, gives the former at £150,498 13s. 5d., and the latter at £83,372 16s. 11d., at the port of Nelson alone; and as a large portion of wool is annually exported from the Wairau, by way of Wellington, while nearly the whole of the Amuri district is shipped at Canterbury, and considerable quantities of gold leave the province by coasting vessels and other means (of the value of which it is impossible at present to obtain a correct estimate), there can be little or no doubt that the value of the whole exported produce of the province has not been less, during the past year, than £123,000. From a return received this day from the Collector of Customs, it appears that the value of exports, for the quarter ending 31st March alone, amounted to nearly £50,000. To this gratifying state of things I have the pleasure to add that the heavy burden of £4,000 a-year, imposed by the General Assembly on this province as its portion of the New Zealand Company's debt, was re-considered in its last session, and it having been ably and satisfactorily shown that the arbitrary distribution of this debt had been based on an erroneous estimate of the respective capabilities of the several provinces concerned to bear the burden of it, and on an assumption that this province contained 18,000,000 of acres, the fact being that
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Nelson Provincial Gazette 1859, No 7
✨ LLM interpretation of page content
🏘️ Opening of the Sixth Session of the Provincial Council
🏘️ Provincial & Local Government12 April 1859
Provincial Council, Nelson, Superintendent, Revenue, Imports, Exports, New Zealand Company debt
- Alfred Domett, Provincial Secretary
- His Honour the Superintendent