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The shortness of the present Session is also the less to be regretted, seeing that there is every prospect that the relations between the General and Provincial Governments will, during the ensuing Session of the General Assembly, be more accurately defined, and placed upon altogether a more satisfactory footing, and our financial position ascertained and determined, so that you will, when we again meet, be enabled to enter upon the task of legislation under far more favourable circumstances than you at present could.

The only measures, then, which in addition to the Estimates and the Appropriation Bill, I propose bringing before you, are a Bill of Indemnity for past Expenditure, and Bills authorising the sale of the Reclaimed Land, the Building of a Deep Water Wharf, and the erection of a Toll-Gate at Kai-warara, and a Bill empowering me to raise the amount required for the Wharf by the issue of Debentures, chargeable upon the dues.

With respect to the Indemnity—while no one deprecates more earnestly than I do the expenditure by a Government of public monies without the sanction of law, still it would, I imagine, be difficult for any one to point out any other course that I could, with a due regard to public interests, in the peculiar position I was placed, have possibly pursued. It is true that I might have refused my warrant for the issue of a single farthing from the public chest—but to say nothing of the other ruin such a proceeding would have entailed upon a large portion of the community, of the state of anarchy and confusion in which it would have involved the whole Province, of the destruction of its credit for years to come, it must be evident to all, that instead of solving our difficulties, it could only have had the effect of increasing them, and of rendering our dissensions more bitter, more irreconcilable. I frankly avow that I can conceive no possible circumstance under which I would have been justified in having recourse to such an extreme and dangerous expedient, as long as the Governor refused to apply the sufficient remedy provided by the Constitution. You will probably remember, that the late Council did pass a Bill of Indemnity for all their expenditure up to the 31st August, 1859, with the exception of a very trifling amount. To that Bill I withheld my assent, partly because it was presented to me some days after the Council had adjourned for three months, thereby preventing me from suggesting any amendments, partly because it professed to indemnify me both for a large expenditure legalised by previous acts, and also for sums expended during the period I was out of office.

In order that you may have the fullest possible information to enable you to decide whether any portion of the expenditure was either not for the public service, or unwise and unnecessary, I have had statements prepared shewing the whole of the expenditure in detail for the years 1858-59-60, and distinguishing the authorised from the unauthorised. From this you will learn that of the £171,000 expended during this period, £93,767 was authorised, and £78,090 without the sanction of law. These statements, together with the Public Accounts audited up to the 31st March, will at once be laid before you.

After the very decided expression of public opinion in favour of selling the reclaimed land, I can have no hesitation in again asking your consent to a Bill confirming the validity of the sales already made, and authorising the Superintendent to sell the remaining portion, and such other portions as are either now in process of being, or may hereafter be reclaimed. The extent to which this reclaiming is to be carried is a question to which I would invite your early attention. Believing that in the present state of our finances and with our future prospects there will be no necessity for forcing sales—that the property thus created will ever yield a large profit—that the cost of reclamation will be diminished in proportion to the scale on which it is conducted, and especially looking, both to the means such a work affords of giving employment to those who stand in need of it, and to the benefits conferred upon this town by such an expenditure, I cannot help recommending that the reclaiming should be continued in its present line to the Kumutoto stream.

With regard to the Deep Water Wharf, the only difference of opinion I apprehend that will arise will be in regard to its site. By placing it midway between Noah’s Ark and Kumutoto you undoubtedly gain two advantages—you increase the facility with which vessels could both approach to it and get under weigh when leaving the port—and you confer an increased value on a much larger portion of the reclaimed land than would be the case were the wharf nearer to Noah’s Ark—but then, on the other hand, you either cause a very considerable delay in erecting the wharf, or you make its cost much greater than it would be, if it was carried out from the land in process of reclamation. Should you decide upon the latter site, there is no reason why, as soon as ever the plans and specifications are prepared, tenders should not be called for, though as I have already stated, it is proposed to provide for its building by means of a loan, its cost in the first instance may be defrayed out of the Provincial revenue without at all interfering with the provision required for other public works. Its cost is estimated at from £10,000 to £15,000—and the wharf dues are expected to amount to about £2000 a year, a sum amply sufficient to pay the interest and furnish a sinking fund for the extinction of the principal.

In addition to these measures there is one proposal, to your decision upon which the Settlers in the Country are looking with great anxiety. Dismembered as this Province has been by the separation of Hawkes’ Bay, it is no longer necessary that we should continue the Great North Eastern Trunk Line, as we originally intended through the 70 Mile Bush; neither, as the North Western road has been rendered sufficiently available for all purposes of present traffic, need we expend any considerable sum on it. But on the other hand creeping ag settlers gradually are into almost every part of the Province, the cry for district roads is every day becoming more and more urgent; but unfortunately the expense of construction is in most cases, even with the grant in aid, a burden to which the Settlers are wholly unequal, however ready they may be to tax themselves. Instead therefore of Government only contributing an equivalent, I propose it should give double the amount raised for the