2526 THE NEW ZEALAND GAZETTE. [No. 83

The present condition of mail-connections with the United Kingdom is unsatisfactory, and negotiations are proceeding with a view to giving a closer connection via Vancouver, and also endeavouring to obtain an improved mail-service via San Francisco. The Government consider that it would be of great advantage to the Dominion if one of the large steamship, mail, and passenger lines now trading from England to Australia via the Suez Canal were to extend their voyage to New Zealand. My Advisers will ask the authority of Parliament to enable mail and passenger services generally to be improved, and thereby remove the undeniable isolation by which the Dominion at present is detrimentally affected.

The Native-land law of New Zealand, now contained in over seventy separate statutes, has, owing chiefly to the lines along which this legislation has developed for the last forty years under different Administrations, become perplexingly profuse, intricate, and inconsistent. In the circumstances the Commissioners appointed under “The Reprint of Statutes Act, 1895,” found consolidation an impossible task, and so reported to me. My Advisers have accordingly had a separate Bill prepared, revising, recasting, and harmonizing the whole of the Native-land laws of this country, and making such amendments as are requisite. The Bill will shortly be introduced for your consideration. The triple gain in the simplicity, clearness, and brevity of this branch of law will facilitate the operation of the Native Land Courts, the determination of Native-land titles, and the settlement of Native lands.

My Advisers fully recognise that the rapidly increasing population of the North Island demands a vigorous policy of European settlement on all surplus Native lands. The work of the recent Native Land Commission and the present energetic promotion of surveys facilitate this policy. Returns showing what has been lately done in various directions towards this end will be shortly submitted to you. Provision will also be made for the better settlement of the Natives upon the lands reserved for their use and occupation.

The time has arrived when Native lands should bear a larger share of the expense of the public works by which these lands are made more accessible or otherwise improved in value, and legislation providing for the rating of Native land in all reasonable cases will be brought before you. Such a provision will, my Advisers think, serve the dual purpose of a just impost and a spur to the closer settlement or cultivation of the lands affected.

The permanent prosperity and steady progress of this Dominion depend chiefly upon the increase in number and success of its small farmers in all branches of that great industry, and the two cardinal aims of the Government in this country are to get and keep an ever-increasing proportion of its population upon its lands. To this end you will be asked to consider and pass the Special Settlement Finance Bill, introduced last year, which makes the State a guarantor behind every group of willing and capable small settlers without adequate means, that they will pay the purchase-money of the freehold of any suitable area they can acquire for closer settlement from larger owners.

You will be asked to consider further land legislation, devised, among other things, to make rural life more attractive, to encourage settlement, and to more effectively prevent undesirable aggregation of holdings.

You will also be asked to pass further legislation to prevent continuing evasions of the Land and Income Assessment Act.

The subject of prison reform has been engaging the attention of my Advisers, and a system proceeding along the lines already successfully tried in other progressive countries is now nearly completed. It is essential to the effective working of this system that the principle of the indeterminate sentence should be extended, and fuller powers than exist at present be given to Magistrates for the committal of female and juvenile offenders to homes or reformatories instead of to gaols. To further assist this system some amendments of the law relating to inebriates are requisite. Legislation embodying these purposes will be brought before you.

My Advisers have been much interested in and impressed by the discussions and resolutions of the various conferences of Harbour Board delegates, and in