pally derived, may be indefinitely postponed, to the serious injury of the inhabitants of those districts who might look for speedy relief. A considerable portion of the revenue is appropriated for opening our Main Trunk Circuit: proposals will also be submitted to you for regulating supplementary grants to District Road Boards; these proposals being based on the land revenue derived from each district, will, I hope, meet with your favorable consideration.

The continued increase of the cost of some of the Departmental Establishments, disproportionate to the increase of the public revenue and expenditure, is a subject of the gravest importance. The whole machinery of Government should be reviewed, and the number of officers, and their salaries, adjusted on some well defined basis, excluding the operation of those disturbing influences which, by creating exceptions, give rise to a general dissatisfaction. The reduction of an establishment is invariably destructive of efficiency, and therefore its undue extension should be guarded against.

A continuous stream of female immigration, under a system of assisted passages, gives every promise of reducing, to a considerable extent, that disproportion between the numbers of the sexes which was assuming an undesirable character.

I will communicate to you by message during the Session the arrangements which have been entered into for the construction of an Electric Telegraph from the Northern settlements, in connection with a general telegraphic system for the Middle Island; as also those arrangements which have been made for the establishment of Light-houses, both on the entrance of the Harbour and in Foveaux Straits.

A West Coast Expedition, under the Chief Surveyor, Mr. Thomson, accompanied by the Provincial Geologist, Dr. Hector, merely awaits your sanction. Whether regarded as necessary to complete the survey of the Province, the development of the Provincial resources, or as a tribute to science, it equally commends itself to your favorable consideration.

I have received a letter, which I will transmit to you in due course, from His Honor the Superintendent of Taranaki, asking whether certain facilities would be granted to those among the people of that Province who might desire to settle in Otago. Knowing your warmest sympathies are with this gallant little enduring people, the victims of a cruel political complication, ready but prevented from righting themselves, I fully anticipate your reply.

While recording my admiration of the character of the great mass of those, who, from the neighbouring colonies, have reached our shores, I cannot refrain from expressing my regret that there is a considerable infusion of the criminal element; men, whose presence here is extremely undesirable, and whose penal servitude for life being shortened, but who are prevented from revisiting Britain, are visiting this Province. It is owing to their presence that our revenues are grievously crippled, the various branches of Police and Gaols demanding, respectively, no less than £5000 and £3000 per annum, exclusive of increased outlay for buildings. It is only reasonable to share a penal establishment, external to the Province should be created and maintained by the General Government out of the revenues of the colony. I have brought the whole subject in an emphatic manner before His Excellency’s advisers. In the meantime, I will submit for re-enactment, with certain alterations, the Criminals’ Ordinance, 1862, of the session before last.

I shall feel peculiarly gratified should you concur with me in considering that the time had arrived when a Provincial recognition should be accorded to the devotion and unremitting exertions of the former leader of this colony, the late Captain Cargill.

The disposal of the Crown Lands of the Province, so as to encourage the settlement of population, the investment of capital in the immediate tillage of the soil, and the erection of towns, are also to produce a revenue for public purposes, so vitally essential to the progress of the Province, has been a cause of much anxious enquiry.

It is abundantly evident that our Land Regulations do not invite a bona fide settlement of population, neither is the marketable value of the land realised by the State, while the best portions of the country, those particularly adapted for agricultural settlement, are being alienated without being populated. I respectfully suggest these considerations during the present Session. I will take an early opportunity of communicating to you certain proposals which appear adapted to meet some of the evils complained of, and which will also enable you to anticipate by loan those resources which will be available when, by the expiry of the existing Pastoral Licenses and the consequent resumption of the land, the Government will be in a position to realise by way of lease a sum scarcely less than that derived from the sale of land at the present time. A measure so necessary to the full development of the country, now partially paralysed, and the preservation from forced sales of the land, now sacrificed, will doubtless commend itself to the judgment of His Excellency’s advisers, and receive their cordial support.

So soon as the drafts of the Session are over, I shall be happy to confer with you in a request to His Excellency the Governor that he may be pleased to dissolve the Council.

I will not detain you any longer from the important subjects which will shortly absorb your attention, but content myself with the expression of an earnest hope that your counsels may be so directed from on High that the principles of constitutional government, the blessings of civil and religious liberty, the demands of an evangelised justice, and the preservation of peace and order may thereby be fostered, advanced, and enhanced.

I now declare this Council open for the despatch of business.

J. L. C. RICHARDSON,
Superintendent.