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diency of the Council agreeing to grant temporary supply pending the assembling of the new Provincial Council.

J. Macandrew,
Superintendent.

May 15, 1873.

Message No. 6:

It is with the utmost reluctance that the Superintendent is compelled to convey to the Provincial Council his regret that the Council has not seen fit to reply to his former Messages, an act of courtesy which he had hoped would have been deemed due to the office which he holds, apart altogether from personal considerations.

The Provincial Council will have been in Session a fortnight to-morrow without making the slightest progress in the practical business for which it was convened, and for aught that the Superintendent can see to the contrary, this state of things is as likely as not to continue for an indefinite period.

There appears, therefore, to be no alternative but to prorogue the Council, and appeal to the people—a course which, after two ineffectual attempts to form an Executive, the Superintendent with the advice and consent of the Executive Council has resolved to adopt.

It is hoped that under the circumstances His Excellency the Acting-Governor will not refuse his assent to a dissolution, seeing that otherwise the affairs of the Province will speedily arrive at a dead-lock.

The Superintendent need scarcely say that the step which he has now adopted in a painful one to himself, and has been taken under a very grave sense of responsibility.

Elected by, and responsible to, the whole body of the people, he should be betraying the trust reposed in him were he quietly to submit to the offices being trampled upon, and to the business of the Province being brought to a standstill. The Superintendent would respectfully point out to the majority of the Provincial Council that, if the somewhat anomalous political machinery in the shape of responsible government, with an elective head, which the Province has seen fit to adopt to the Constitution, is to work at all beneficially, there must needs be, in the choosing an Executive, mutual concession, and that the feelings and views of the Superintendent have at least as much right to be consulted as have those of the Provincial Council.

The Superintendent has been chosen by the majority of the people to administer the affairs of the Province, and has been pledged to a policy of progress. It is manifest, therefore, that the majority of the Council, by seeking to force upon his acceptance advisers, who, it may be, entertain entirely opposite views from the Superintendent, are seeking to place him in a false position—a position which he refuses to accept.

The Superintendent came down to the Council at its opening with very important proposals, bearing upon the advancement of the Province—proposals which it was intended to have followed up by others equally important. Instead of entertaining any of these, however, the time has been occupied in discussing matters which have little or no practical bearing upon the public interests. Circumstances which the Superintendent trusts will amply justify in the eyes of the people the action which in the interests of the country he has been compelled to take.

J. Macandrew,
Superintendent.

19th May, 1873.

Proclamation Proroguing the Council.

Whereas by an Act of the Imperial Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland, passed in the Session of Parliament held in the fifteenth and sixteenth years of the reign of Her present Majesty Queen Victoria, intituled “An Act to grant a Representative Constitution to the Colony of New Zealand,” it was amongst other things enacted that for each of the Provinces established in the said Colony by the said Act, there should be a Superintendent and a Provincial Council, to be elected, and constituted under and subject to the provisions in that behalf therein contained, and that it shall be lawful for the Superintendent of any of the said Provinces to prorogue the Provincial Council thereof, from time to time, whenever he should deem it expedient so to do:

Now therefore I, the Superintendent of the Province of Otago (one of the Provinces aforesaid) do proclaim and declare that I do hereby, in pursuance of the power vested in me in that behalf by the said Act, prorogue the Provincial Council of the said Province of Otago, and that the said Provincial Council is prorogued accordingly.

Given under my hand, and issued under the public seal of the said Province, at Dunedin, in the Province aforesaid, this nineteenth day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy-three.

(J.s.)

J. Macandrew,
Superintendent.

Printed under the authority of the Provincial Government of Otago, by Mills, Dick and Co., Stafford street, Printers to the said Provincial Government for the time being.