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(2) My answer to these Despatches has been hitherto postponed, because, being made aware by your Despatch of November 13th, 1848, that the Ordinance of November 28th, 1848, for the establishment of Provincial Legislative Councils was already in operation for the Province of New Munster, I considered it most advisable to wait for further accounts of the manner in which it had been received, and of the general state of the Colony, before submitting it to the Queen for confirmation.

I have now to inform you that Her Majesty has been pleased to confirm and allow this Ordinance. You will communicate Her Majesty’s decision to the Inhabitants of the Colony under your Government by a Proclamation, to be published in the usual and most authentic manner.

(3) I likewise concur entirely in your views and proposals respecting the future introduction of Representative Institutions, by the creation of Legislative Bodies, such as you have described, exercising the same functions respectively as the General and Provincial Councils now constituted by you.

(4) But, at the same time, I do not think it at all advisable that Parliament should interfere, (in the manner proposed in the Resolution of the Council of New Munster and in your Despatch of February 2nd, 1849,) by passing at present any new Act, for the purpose of giving effect to these views.

For I do not perceive that you propose that any change in the existing form of Government (beyond such changes as you are empowered to make with the advice of your Legislative Council, by the Act of 11th and 12th Victoria, Chapter 5) should actually come into operation before the expiration of the five years for which the Constitution of the Island is suspended.

This being the case, I consider it to be manifestly inexpedient that Parliament should now pass an Act in order to make provision for a time as yet so far distant, when it is quite possible that, in the interval, experience may point out some advisable changes in the details if not in the general features of such a measure. Nor can it be necessary to introduce such a bill into Parliament for the mere purpose of affording to the Colonists a guarantee that their enjoyment of Representative Institutions shall not be unnecessarily delayed; since, by the Acts now in force, the suspension of these Institutions can last only for the five years above mentioned, at the end of which time they will of themselves come into operation, and it is certain that nothing but a sense of obvious necessity would induce Parliament to continue their suspension.

(5) With respect to the postponement for the present of the introduction of those Institutions, I entirely concur in the reasons which you have assigned for it in your recent Despatches, particularly that of March 22nd, 1849, confirmed as its representations are by the fuller description of the state of Society and progress of the colony contained in your Despatch of July 9th, 1849, transmitting the Blue Book.

You have advanced reasons apparently conclusive against immediately discontinuing the whole of the pecuniary assistance afforded by this country towards the Civil expenditure of the Colony, or reducing at once the Military assistance now afforded it, to an amount more nearly proportioned to the force maintained in other Colonies of similar European Population.

But the same reasons apply with equal force against the immediate Grant of a Representative Government: since, whenever this is given, it must be considered as its indispensable accompaniment that the mother country should soon be relieved from all charge on account of the Civil Administration of the Colony, as was pointed out in my Despatch of the 1st February 1847; and should also be relieved from a very large portion of the burthen of its military protection.

(6) With respect to the Civil List, I have to call your attention to the Legal Authority under which it is reserved, in order that the provisions made by Parliament respecting it, may be duly complied with.

The Act of 1846, (9th and 10th Victoria, ch. 103, sec. 12), empowers the Queen to appropriate by Letters Patent a Civil List not exceeding £6,000 per annum for each Province.

The Letters Patent issued under that Act accordingly reserve £6,000 per annum for each Province.

The Instructions provide that the Civil List so appropriated shall be applied “as the Lords of the Treasury shall direct.”

(7) It is obvious that this provision will only become of real importance when a popular Legislature shall be created to which the power of controlling the whole public expenditure, except that portion reserved as a Civil List, will be entrusted. In the meantime while the whole Colonial Revenue is appropriated by yourself with the aid of a Legislature nominated by the Crown and acting under the directions of Her Majesty’s Government, with respect to the salaries to be assigned to the various public servants in the Colony, it is practically immaterial which of these salaries are nominally charges upon the Civil List under the sanction of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury. But while this matter is of little or no practical consequence, it is not the less necessary to avoid even any technical departure from the rules laid down by Parliament. Now the Act 11th Vict. c. 5, which suspends many other provisions of the Act and Letters Patent of 1846 does not suspend those relating to the Civil List. It appears, therefore, that they are still in force; and that they are not alterable except in the manner provided by that Act, viz.— by the enactment of an Assembly framed under the Act of 1846. But as no such Assembly has been constituted, nor can be constituted, while the powers given by the Act remain suspended, it would seem that the present temporary Legislatures possess no power to alter them.

(8) On the other hand the Ordinance of the 18th November, 1848, appears to assume that the existing temporary Legislature has power to provide a Civil List (sections 23 and 24). As however it has in point of fact only repeated the provisions already in force, and as these sections of the Ordinance may have been framed under a different view of the law from that which I have above suggested, I have not thought it necessary to delay the confirmation of the Ordinance on account of them. It is sufficient for me to have directed your attention to the circumstance. If the above view be correct, any alteration in the amount of the Civil Lists, during the suspension of the Constitution can only be effected by Parliament, or through an amendment of the Letters Patent by the Queen.

(9) But you will observe that in any view the “directions and appointment” of the Lords of the Treasury are necessary in order to legalize the appropriation of the Civil List. As no Estimates of this part of the Expenditure, distinct from the remainder of it, have hitherto reached me, I wish you to transmit them at your earliest convenience, with a view to procuring the sanction of their Lordships to the appropriation thus authorized by yourself, which under the circumstances will satisfy substantially the words of chapter xi of the Instructions.

(10) On the general question of the Civil List, my opinion is that a Representative Legislature, when it comes into operation, ought to be as little fettered as possible by Parliamentary enactments in making such changes as may from time to time be required in the appropriation of the Revenue.