115

of things, and to attempt to carry on the Go-
vernment with your present Officers, against the
declared judgment of this House, and the gene-
ral opinion of the Colony! Assuming this House
to be prepared to place at the disposal of such a
Government the requisite supplies for the public
service, we pray your Excellency to consider
how powerless it would be to contend against the
difficulties with which it would be surrounded.
As it would not command the sympathy or respect
of the Colony, how, unable it would be to exer-
cise due control over the Provincial Governments,
and unsupported by a popular General Legisla-
ture; or by public opinion, it would be certain to
fail in any struggle with those bodies and in that
failure may be involved a loss of influence on
which the unity of the Colony depends. How
unable such a Government would be during
the short remains of its precarious exis-
tence to originate and execute those mea-
sures of organic reconstruction of which
we have shown so great and such im-
mediate need. Besides this, the Empire
is involved in foreign war, the effects of
which may reach even this, its remotest de-
pendency, whilst recent occurrences prove that
⚫ we are not entirely free from the risk of
native disturbances. We pray your Excel-
lency to weigh seriously, and by your own
decision to avert, the momentous evils which may
spring from a feeble, unsupported, and unpopular
Government at such a crisis..

We have not overlooked the fact referred to
by your Excellency of the temporary nature of
your Excellency's tenure of office. But your
Excellency, on the other hand, must pardon us
for reminding you, that the demand of Minis-
terial Responsibility was one of the obvious inci-
dents of the assembling of a popular Legislature;
to some extent, bound yourself to follow out
that measure to its natural consequences.
The temporary and provisional nature of your
Excellency's tenure of office is indeed an argu-
ment the force of which we recognise in esti-
mating your Excellency's claims on our sym-
pathy and gratitude; but not as a ground
of relief from the duties of your position.
Under grave circumstances like the present the
interests of the colony are the one paramount con-
sideration, and with that object in view, we know
not how to draw a distinction between the relations
of the Governo de facto towards the Colony,
whether he be a permanent or temporary ad-
ministrator of the office, nor can we recognize
any difference arising out of such distinction, in
the nature or degree of the duties and respon-
sibilities which must grow out of such relations.

Before determining this our last appeal to your
Excellency on this subject, we pray your Excel-
lency to bear in mind that we ask no more than
the application of a principle of policy, fully ad-
mitted by the Imperial Government as applicable
to colonies, in which popular Legislatures have
been established on the basis of complete re-
presentation. The recent cases of Jamaica and
Newfoundland in which it has been applied under
the express direction of the Imperial Govern-
ment may, (we venture to urge,) be assumed by
your Excellency as safe guides in the present in-
stance.

We trust that your Excellency will pardon
this our apparent importunity. We have felt
called on thus to lay our sentiments before you
without reserve, no less from motives of duty to
your Excellency as founded on a regard for the in-
terests of your Excellency's Government, of Her
Majesty's Service, and of the Colony, than from
a deep sense of our own responsibilities and an

anxiety to discharge our own consciences in this
matter. And in conclusion we humbly beg that
your Excellency will be pleased to give due
weight to arguments founded on considerations of
justice, policy, and duty; and, so far as in you
lies, to rescue the colony from its alarming
difficulties by acceding to our reiterated prayer,
for the immediate establishment of the Execu-
tive Government on the basis of complete Minis-
terial Responsibility.

Passed the House of Representatives,
this day of August 1854.

CHARLES CLIFFORD,
Speaker,

MESSAGE No. 32.

The Officer administering the Government
has received an Address from the House of
Representatives, dated the 16th instant, in
answer to his Message of the 5th instant
(No. 25), and has bestowed upon the contents
of that document the anxious consideration
which his sense of their great importance to
the Colony demanded from him.

He will not permit the character of some of
the statements and arguments which that
Address conveys to him to disturb the friendly
sentiments towards the House of Representa-
tives which he sincerely entertains, and
considers it a duty to cultivate by all the
means in his power. Controversy between
the House and himself on portions of their Ad-
dress, which he cannot but feel to be objection-
able, could produce no good result and would
probably lead to an increase of the evil which
he deplores. He will not, therefore, allude
further to the subject.

In the hope of securing harmonious rela-
tions between the Legislative and Executive
branches of the Government, and in order to
meet to the utmost of his power the wishes of
the House with regard to the establishment of
Ministerial Responsibility, the Officer admin-
istering the Government, at an early period
of the session, took upon himself the respon-
sibility of making an important change in the
composition of the Executive Council, and he
hopes ever to recollect with pleasure the ex-
pression of the satisfaction of the House at his
prompt compliance with their desire.

Avoiding, as worse than useless in the pre-
sent state of affairs; all reference to the sub-
jects of his difference with the late members of
the Executive Council, the Officer adminis-
tering the Government is, nevertheless, com-
pelled to notice and, indeed, to take as his
guide, the new position in which he and the
House are placed by the new demand now
presented to him in the following words :-

"We turn to the future, appealing to your
Excellency under a deep and solemn conviction
of the responsibility which rests no less upon
your Excellency than upon ourselves, under the
present critical position of the Colony. Dismis-
sing all that has passed, we pray your Excellency
to look at the question as now standing on new
ground, and surrounded with new circumstances,
and therefore justifying new concessions."
The concession required being, in the last
words of the Address,

"The immediate establishment of the Execu-