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not at all coincide in that opinion, and cannot recommend you to vote a salary for a Provincial Secretary, in addition to that of the clerks in the Superintendent's office, a vote that would be justified neither by the state of our provincial revenue, nor the amount of work to be done, I have not made any new appointment, but have requested the Chief Clerk to act as Provincial Secretary pro tem. I may say that the gentleman holding that appointment, has no wish to have his office as Chief Clerk changed for one of a political and possibly less continuous character, nor do I think it at all desirable that it should be so, as much inconvenience would probably arise from the resignation or removal of an officer whose experience is so much, and who knows all the details of his department, and at no time would this inconvenience be so seriously felt as at the election of a Superintendent, himself inexperienced in the duties of his office.

IV.—My short experience in the position I now hold has strengthened the opinion I have long entertained, that the officers in the employ of the Provincial Government of this province are both too numerous, and, in many instances, too highly paid for the kind of work required of them; and that this excessive expenditure is very far from increasing the practical efficiency of the public service.

V.—My short experience to remodel the whole of the provincial establishment, and place it upon a more efficient and economical footing, were we not met by the great difficulty of either reducing the long-received salaries of existing public servants, or removing them, without any fault of their own, from a service which custom may have here taught them to look upon as inalienable during good behaviour, and which may have more or less disqualified them for other occupations.

This difficulty will prevent the very desirable reduction in the expenditure upon the civil service of the province being either so immediate or so complete as it might otherwise have been, and will only be completely met, without inflicting injustice, by a patient, continued, and united effort on the part of the Provincial Executive and Legislature.

I shall enter into some particulars on this subject in a Message I shall transmit to you with the Estimates.

The necessity of entirely discontinuing the increase of expenditure upon salaries and departmental expenses which has hitherto been annually made, and taking every opportunity to diminish it that may be consistent with efficiency or existing engagements, will be best shown by some analysis of the receipts and expenditure of the past financial year. The total revenue received by the Provincial Treasurer during the year amounted to the sum of £44,427 16s., considerably more than half of which, or £24,111 17s., was received from the sale of our publicly decreasing landed estate. Yet, of this large sum, only £7,274 3s., or less than one-sixth of the whole, was actually spent upon roads and bridges. So that the annual grants to the various Road Boards. So that the falling off of one-sixth of our total revenue, or little more than two-sevenths of our land sales, would, at the present rate of our expenditure, leave nothing whatever to expend upon roads and bridges.

Although the gross Land Revenue for the year has reached the sum of £26,968 13s., that revenue for the last half-year has only amounted to £6,333 16s. 4d.; and it is evident that we must for the future be very moderate in our expectations of net revenue from this source, as the land which now remains in the hands of the Crown, so far as it is known, is not only less valuable and attractive than the portions

that have been sold, but is generally in comparatively isolated blocks and difficult of access, causing a great additional expense in the survey, and rendering it imperative that a very large outlay should be incurred for roads, before the land can be at all advantageously offered for sale. You will, therefore, I trust, agree with me that the resources of the province can only be fully developed by a far-sighted policy, that will refrain from expending our small land revenue upon officers and salaries, or the improvement of the strongly represented districts, but expend it almost exclusively in constructing roads and bridges that render our unsold territory accessible and valuable. This policy, if steadily persisted in, would cause much of the outlay made in opening the country to be constantly returned to the provincial chest as Land Revenue, and would also develop a natural source of wealth, the great extent of which is daily becoming more apparent.

A very large portion of the land of this province consists of gold-fields that will pay for working, if provisions can be supplied at a moderate cost to the workers, whilst by far the greater portion of the gold producing country is of a character that will not pay for the enormous price to which the necessaries of life are frequently raised by the cost of transit through a roadless and rugged country.

V.—The provincial, share of the Customs duties for the year has amounted to £11,094 12s. 3d. The sum received for gold-duty is more than double that received last year, being £2,312 6s. 2d. The gross Customs receipts during the last quarter, including the gold-duty, amounted to the sum of £10,423 12s. 11d., being £6,111 13s. 4d. more than was received during the corresponding quarter of the previous year.

This large increase must of course be partially attributed to the increased Tariff, but principally to the large quantity of duty-paying articles sent to the West Coast, and to the increase of the gold-digging population scattered over various portions of the province.

The total expenditure for the year has been £42,741 8s., 6d. of which £13,425 11s. 5d. has been for departmental expenses, and £6,299 12s. 4d. for education.

VI.—The large population that has been attracted to the south-western borders of our province by the gold discoveries that have been made at Hokitika, has so clearly pointed to the great desirability of immediately opening a road from the mouth of the Grey River, to meet the roads that have been made to the east, to a distance from the capital town of about 111 miles into the interior, that I have not hesitated to anticipate what I felt sure would be your wish, and have engaged parties to commence at both ends of what is likely to prove the most serviceable and by far the cheapest and most readily opened road. The line chosen is to commence at the end of the bridle road now just about completed, to the north end of the Maruia Plains, thence along these plains and over the saddle into a branch of the Grey, following that river to the sea, and keeping on the north bank all the way excepting a portion already made on the south bank, through Mr. Freeth's run (about ten miles), which will be made use of for the present time. From the absence of any survey between the Maruia Plains and the Grey River, the whole distance can only be guessed at; it is, however, estimated to be about sixty-six miles from the plains to the port.

The instructions given to the party sent to the western end of the line are, to commence at the port on the north bank of the Grey, and to cut a