OTAGO

PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT GAZETTE

PUBLISHED BY AUTHORITY.

All Public Notifications which appear in this Gazette, with any Official Signature thereto annexed are to be considered as Official Communications made to those Persons to whom they may relate, and are to be obeyed accordingly.

By His Honor’s Command,

THOMAS DICK,
Provincial Secretary.

Vol. VI.] WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1863. [No. 260.

ADDRESS

OF

HIS HONOR THE SUPERINTENDENT

On Opening the Seventeenth Session of the Provincial Council of the Province of Otago, 12th August, 1863.

GENTLEMEN OF THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL—

The exigencies of the Province, and the position in which the Executive Government stands in relation to yourselves and to the country, have determined me to avail myself thus early of the benefit of your counsels.

It is, doubtless, known to you that through a defect in our Provincial Executive Laws I, as your Superintendent, on assuming the government of the Province, was deprived of the salutary checks which had regulated the acts of my predecessors; and that, although anxious to give full effect to the principle of responsible Government, which has from the earliest period of our political existence as a Province been recognised and established, I was, of necessity, compelled, for a considerable period of time, to undertake the Executive Government of the Province upon my sole personal responsibility—a responsibility rather increased than abated, by the fact, that while I succeeded your late Superintendent, Major Richardson, on the 16th April, your last votes of revenue had expired on the 31st of the preceding March; and also, by the additional circumstance that through an unusual lapse of time between the date of my election and your own, I was compelled to choose between a total suspension of the operations of Government, and a resort to a continuous unauthorised expenditure of the public monies. The latter course was adopted by me, and you will be asked to sanction the necessary disbursements which I have, under unusual circumstances, authorised.

Before proceeding to address you upon other subjects of general public importance, including those upon which it is your province to legislate, and others upon which your weight can be brought to bear, by resolution or otherwise, I feel it due to you to afford an intelligible view of the position which your Executive Government at present occupies.

I have already stated that for a considerable period, computed from the 16th April last, I was necessarily the only Executive officer of the Provincial Government, the Board of Audit and Executive Council Ordinance of 1860 merely providing that, in the event of a dissolution of the Provincial Council, the existing Executive Council should continue in office until the election of a new Superintendent. It would thus appear that the framers of that Ordinance had not considered that the election of Superintendent must precede that of the Provincial Council, and that the new Superintendent might, as in my own case, be placed in a position of isolated responsibility for a considerable time. The result of this defect in the Ordinance just quoted has in the present case been, that for about two months circumstances combined