71

Colonial Secretary’s Office,

Wellington, 4th May, 1866.

Sir,—I have the honor, by the direction of Mr. Stafford, to request you to be good enough to inform him when it is probable that the Statistics for 1864 will be published.

As so much delay has occurred in their publication, it would be desirable that you should at the same time place on record the causes, so far as you are aware of this delay.

W. Gisborne,

Under Secretary.

The Registrar-General, Auckland.

Registrar-General’s Office,

Auckland, 11th May, 1866.

Sir,—I have the honor to submit the following statements in reply to a letter dated the 4th instant, in which Mr. Gisborne, by your direction, requests me to inform you when it is probable that the Statistics for 1864 will be published; and, at the same time, to place on record the causes, so far as I am aware, of the delay in their publication.

With reference to the first inquiry, I have this morning finally corrected the proofs of the last of the Tables to be included in the volume. Only the Introductory Report and the Contents remain to be printed. The successive portions, as they were worked off, were sent to the binder, in order to have as much as possible in the way of preparation done by him, and I think he is anxious to get his part quickly out of hand. Under these circumstances, I expect that (unless some hindrance, which I see no reason to apprehend, should arise), the volume will be ready to be put in circulation by the end of this month.

The causes of the delay were various; and I trust I may be permitted to say were, not only beyond my control, but entailed upon me no small amount of additional trouble and anxiety. Although I was able to prepare certain principal results of the Census for publication at an earlier date than on any former occasion, yet the time and labour required in this office for the revision of those results, and the compilation of branches of information not included in them, was greatly beyond what had been found necessary for either 1858 or 1861. This arose, no doubt, partly from the increase of population, but was chiefly owing to the unsatisfactory state in which the Returns from the Enumerators in some of the Provinces were sent in to me and which required, not only correspondence, but in several instances, recompilation in this office from the original Household Schedules. Similar difficulties to these (although then existing in only a smaller degree) prevented the publication of the volume for 1861 until the close of 1862.

But the principal causes which have kept back the publication of the volume up to the present, have been the late period at which I received information for the General Statistics, particularly with regard to the Trade and Revenue Tables, and the time which has been occupied in the printing. The removal of the Seat of Government happened just at the period of 1865 when the preparation of Returns to be compiled from documents in the offices of the Hon. the Colonial Treasurer and Commissioner of Customs should have been commenced; and here there was an inevitable occasion of delay, which probably was prolonged by the necessity of giving primary attention to Returns required for the General Assembly during its session. But whatever may have been the hindrance, the plain fact was that, in the latter months of the year, while the question was urgently asked “Why are not the Statistics published?” a considerable portion of the most important information to be embodied in them had not come into my own hands. It was only in the course of the month of January last that I received some of the most indispensable of the Financial Returns, there having been even at the last, as I understood, delay and difficulty in obtaining some of the information from the Provinces required at Wellington for the completion of those Returns.

The time occupied by the printing of the volume has far exceeded what I had calculated on after making every allowance for the consideration that the volume is larger than those of previous years. The contractor has also expressed willingness and even anxiety to get forward as rapidly as he could, still the average progress of the work