That repeal did not abrogate the right of any Province to have its cause judged by the Legislature itself, after discussion and deliberation upon its merits, and was not intended to authorise that such right should be absolutely concluded by the fiat of the Governor in Council without any enquiry whatever into anything except the conditions specified in the New Provinces Act, which have no reference to the reasonableness or unreasonableness of the proposed measure, or to the benefit or disadvantage of it to the Province at large — is to be made the subject of the experiment, or even to that part of it seeking to be disjoined.

9. That the Act is further greatly partial and unjust; not only inasmuch as it provides a method for a portion of the Province being severed from the rest, irrespective of the well-being of that portion of it within which the capital of the Province is situated, and of the progress and vitality of the whole, but also, in not providing for such new Province being compelled to bear its share of the burthen of any debt contracted by the Province for immigration or improvements — in all the benefits of which the district seeking to be separated and erected into a new Province may have largely participated — of any other debt due by the original Province than the principal sum and interest of such part of the loan raised under the New Zealand Loan Act as forms a charge against the original Province.

10. That, besides, it is unjustly enacted that, upon the establishment of any new Province, all estate and interest of the Superintendent of the original Province in any lands for behoof of such Province shall forthwith vest in the Superintendent of the new Province for its behoof; thus transferring all the public property of the original Province to its severed limb.

Whereas His Excellency the Governor in Council has constituted judge of the merits of the question of severance, although that provision would have rendered the New Provinces Act less objectionable, yet it would still have been unsatisfactory: inasmuch as the Constitution Act having conferred upon each of the six Provinces of New Zealand the right and privilege of preserving its integral existence, unless broken up by an Act of the Colonial Legislature, and the 69th section of the Constitution Act having been repealed (as is approved by Mr. Colonial Secretary Labouchere’s despatch of 15th September 1857) for the purpose only of allowing the Colonial Legislature to pass an Act constituting new Provinces without requiring for its operation Her Majesty’s previous assent, that repeal did not abrogate the right of any Province to have its cause judged by the Legislative itself, after discussion and deliberation upon its merits, and was not intended to authorise that such right should be absolutely concluded by the fiat of the Governor in Council without any enquiry whatever into anything except the conditions specified in the New Provinces Act, which have no reference to the reasonableness or unreasonableness of the proposed measure, or to the benefit or disadvantage of it to the Province at large.

10. That the assertion of the undoubted right on the part of each of the original Provinces to have its cause judged by the Colonial Legislature, and not by his Excellency the Governor’s ministers alone, is the more necessary as his Excellency’s ministers appear to have certain theoretical views as to what should be the constitution of the Provinces, for the operation of some of which they have provided by the New Provinces Act; thereby establishing for the intended new Provinces a constitution differing in several material respects from the constitution of the original Provinces, as enacted by the Constitution Act, and thus introducing a duality of provincial constitutions which is wholly uncalled for, is apt to create confusion, uncertainty, and differences, and is in no respect an improvement, but on the contrary a manifest deterioration of the provisions of the Constitution Act.

11. That upon these and other grounds the Provincial Council of Otago enters its solemn protest against a measure which it cannot but regard as a sinister omen of the mischief that may be inflicted upon this Province whenever an opportunity may offer; and expresses the fervent hope and prayer that her most gracious Majesty may be advised to disallow the New Provinces Act, or to recommend to his Excellency the Governor in Council the introduction to the Legislature of a measure for the repeal of a law so obnoxious to the just rights of the Provinces.

12. That the foregoing Resolutions be transmitted through his Honor the Superintendent to his Excellency the Governor, with a respectful request