NEW ZEALAND

OTAGO

PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT

GAZETTE.

Published by Authority.

Vol. IX. DUNEDIN, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1865. No. 394

[WITH SUPPLEMENT.]

ADDRESS OF HIS HONOR THE SUPERINTENDENT,

ON OPENING THE TWENTY FIRST SESSION OF THE PROVINCIAL COUNCIL OF THE PROVINCE OF OTAGO, WEDNESDAY, 15TH NOVEMBER, 1865.

Mr. Speaker, and Gentlemen of the Provincial Council—

In accordance with a Resolution passed by you at the close of the last Session, I have refrained from calling you together, until a fortnight after the termination of the Session of the General Assembly. This has delayed your meeting for above a month beyond the ordinary period, and has necessitated the expenditure for that time of the funds of the Province, without previous appropriation. I trust, however, you will find that careful attention has been paid to carry out the spirit of the Resolution referred to, which allowed the Government to continue the Departmental Expenditure, but not to enter upon any new works.

Although I have few Bills to lay before you, there are several matters of very grave importance, for which I have to solicit your earnest consideration.

First in importance I may rank the position of the Province with respect to the General Government. The last Session of the Assembly has sufficiently shown that it is incumbent upon us to anticipate and endeavour to provide against a course of procedure which would render the Province powerless to help itself, and at the same time leave it with many responsibilities to fulfil. Our present position is most unsatisfactory. On the Provincial authorities rests the onus and responsibility of advancing all the material interests of the Province, and of preserving peace and good order within its bounds, while we are disabled from promptly appropriating, as emergencies arise, the great resources which would otherwise be at our disposal. A change in this respect is inevitable, and to the means for effecting this change, I have to request your serious deliberation, for it is impossible that the Province can advance as it ought under a system of double government, whereby the authority and the responsibility are placed in different hands, and whereby the supreme Government, powerless to aid in times of difficulty, is powerful only in its ability to prevent our helping ourselves, and in casting upon us heavy burdens, incurred for objects with which we have no direct concern. Resolutions will be brought before you on this subject, at an early period of the Session, in order that it may receive the attention its importance deserves.

Intimately connected with the consideration of the above question is the legislation affecting the Waste Lands of the Crown within this Province. The Resolutions passed by you at the last Session were embodied in a Bill, and brought before the Assembly. This Bill has been rejected, and we have thus imposed upon us the duty and the necessity of reconsidering the whole matter this Session. I trust that the Resolutions you will come to on this occasion will be such as to obtain the assent of the General Assembly when it next meets, and that thus, for a time at least, the Land question may be set at rest. The amount of consideration you have already given to the subject, coupled with the many discussions which have taken place since you last met, will no doubt have prepared you for coming to such decisions on this most important matter, as will conduce to the permanent prosperity of the Province, and compensate for the delay which has taken place, by providing a more matured and complete set of Resolutions.

In order to promote the sale of Land within Hundreds which had been for some time proclaimed, and from which, consequently, the best lands had been already selected, I wrote to the Colonial Secretary, endeavouring to obtain, by the passing of a Bill for the purpose through the Assembly, power to the Provincial Council to deal with these lands in such manner as the Council might from time to time see fit; but this effort to secure a means of obtaining Revenue was unsuccessful. Copies of the Correspondence on this subject will be laid on the table.

The remaining debentures of the 1862 Loan have been sold, and while regretting the low price realised, and the consequent pecuniary loss to the Province, the sale has undoubtedly relieved Provincial Finance from much of the uncertainty which must have attached to it, so long as these securities remained unnegotiated.

The progress of Otago has received a temporary check by the discovery of extensive and lucrative gold fields on the West Coast of the Province of Canterbury. So many of our population have gone to these new fields that there have been complaints of a want of labourers in the agricultural and pastoral districts, as well as on our own gold fields. This scarcity is not likely to prove more than temporary, for while we may congratulate our sister Province on its large extent of auriferous land, we may expect that the influx of population there from the Australian Colonies and from the other Provinces of New Zealand, will gradually induce many of our own population to return to the employments which they left when the encouraging and flattering reports from the West Coast reached them.

With a view to facilitating intercourse between the western districts of the two Provinces, anxious also to ascertain if the country between the Wakatipu Gold Fields and those of Westland were auriferous, Mr. Vincent Pyke was despatched to explore it. He followed very much the route previously taken by Dr. Haast, and reported upon by that gentleman to the Canterbury Government. Both Dr. Haast and Mr. Pyke have shown that, at least to Jackson’s Bay, the route