✨ Provincial Council Closing Address
808
veyed in your resolution of last evening is, in ordinary English, tantamount to asking me to resign.
Had you so worded your resolution as to have sought a dissolution at the very earliest period after the Electoral Roll, which will be framed in March next, had been revised, I should most cordially have joined in the prayer; but, I dare not be a consenting party to a transaction which disfranchises more than one-half of my fellow-colonists. Their rights are guaranteed to them by a bond as sacred as any engagement that man can make—and while that law stands on the Statute Book, I, for one, will ceaselessly oppose any evasion of the privileges it confers. I feel convinced that his Excellency and his responsible advisers will not adopt a measure which might have been reversed had the decision been arrived at in Committee of the whole House, the only true field in which the sense of the House can be ascertained—a decision by which several thousand miners, and several hundred individuals engaged throughout the country in agriculture, trade, and commerce, cannot take any part in the elections which would ensue were the prayer granted.
If a bare majority unwilling to assume the responsibilities of office (for I cannot give any other construction to the action taken on the present occasion), after its leader had been informed, as was the case, that any Executive possessing the confidence of the House would be accepted by me, is entitled to demand a dissolution, then the sooner the elective character of the office of Superintendent is done away with the better. He is no longer the representative of the whole body of the people, but the creature of the Council; no longer the guardian and defender of the general interest against local influence, and powerless to prevent evil, but the mere registrar of the votes of the Council, holding office on the sufferance perhaps of a simple majority. This is a position of humiliation that no man of spirit could submit to. On such conditions I would not have accepted office, nor on such conditions would I hold it for an hour.
I thank you gentlemen for your attendance during the present session; and, fully participating in the natural anxiety of the country members to return homewards, I will not detain you any longer.
The resolution embodying your sentiments shall be submitted to his Excellency the Governor at the earliest opportunity, accompanied with the expression of my dissent.
I have to intimate my assent on behalf of His Excellency the Governor to the following Bills:—
A Bill to prevent Cruelty to Animals.
A Bill to constitute a Municipal Estate for the Town of Port Chalmers.
I now prorogue this Council, and it stands prorogued accordingly.
J. RICHARDSON,
Superintendent.
Printed for the Provincial Government by D. CAMPBELL, Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand.
Otago Provincial Gazette 1862, No 164
✨ LLM interpretation of page content
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Closing Address of the 14th Session of the Provincial Council
(continued from previous page)
🏘️ Provincial & Local Government11 December 1861
Closing Address, Executive Council, Vote of Confidence, Dissolution, Electoral Roll
- J. Richardson, Superintendent