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remainder of the Manawatu country will follow.
For already serious disputes have arisen between
the two tribes resident in the district, as to which
tribe is entitled to receive the rents of the runs
leased to the Europeans: and not a few of the
more intelligent of the Natives strongly recom-
mend, as the only way of settling their differences,
that they should join in offering the land for sale
to the Government. Instalments have been paid
on lands both at Waikanae and Horowhenua, but
the title to them is so complicated that I see little
chance of their being acquired at present. I have
gone into these details to show you that your pros-
pects in regard to land purchases are sufficiently
encouraging, and at the same time to point out
that while the districts (to which I have just re-
ferred) are perhaps unequalled in fertility of soil,
they are for the most part heavily timbered, and
will require, to give them value and to make them
available for the purposes of colonisation, a very
extensive and complete system of internal com-
munication.

Now considering the vast and rapidly increas-
ing demand for the timber of which they
contain an almost inexhaustible supply, and the
level nature of the country, the question irresti-
stably forces itself on the mind, whether it would not
be expedient, practicable, and perfectly within our
power to open up these districts by a system
either of Railways, such as are advocated by Mr.
Bridges Adams, or at any rate of Tramways. A
very able memorandum on this subject, drawn up
by a member of this Council, will within a few
days be laid before you, in which a scheme for
connecting these territories with Wellington by
railroads is developed, and which I feel assured
will receive at your hands the careful considera-
tion which it merits.

The reports already published will have made
you aware that Mr. Coutts Crawford has tra-
versed, and made a cursory geological examina-
tion of almost every part of the Province, with-
out discovering any indications of gold, or of any
other metal, with the exception (it may be) of
iron. He has found in various parts traces of
brown coal, but no decided seams; and yet Mr.
Brough Smith, who is at the head of the Mining
Department of Victoria, in his report upon the
specimens of rocks forwarded to him by Mr.
Crawford, expresses a very decided opinion,
"that the search for gold in this Province may be
prosecuted with every prospect of success," and
adds very significantly, "if I were to submit
many of the rocks collected by Mr. Crawford to
any gold miner in Victoria, he would recognise
them at once as precisely similar to those occur-
ring in some of the Victorian gold fields; and
while a few specimens of the milky and ferrugi-
nous quartz are exactly like our own, the chal-
cedonic quartz exactly resembles that found in
the northern gold fields of New South Wales."
Instead of being discouraged by the results of
Mr. Coutts Crawford’s necessarily cursory exa-
mination of a most extensive, difficult and impra-
ticable country, I confess that after the
intimation given to us by Mr. B. Smyth, that our
rocks are similar to those found in the gold
fields both of Victoria and New South Wales,
and especially after the well-established fact that
gold does exist at Terawhiti, and elsewhere, I feel
that more could scarcely have been reasonably
expected to be accomplished within the time, except
by a sheer accident, and that we have ample encou-
ragement to persevere in the search—especially in
the way suggested by Mr. Brough Smith—a sug-
gestion long since made to me by Mr. Crawford
himself.

But if we have thus far failed in discovering a
gold field in our own Province, I doubt whether any
Province is reaping such a rich harvest from the
Otago gold fields as this. It is impossible for any
one to visit the inland districts of this Province
without being struck with the wonderful progress
that has been made during the last year, and with
the signs of increasing wealth and prosperity
which are every where visible. Nothing shows
more clearly the wonderful influence that the
discovery of gold in the Middle Island has had
upon this Province, than the Custom House
returns of New Zealand produce exported from
this to the neighbouring Provinces. Taking by
way of illustration only a few items, you will
find on referring to those returns that during
the year just ended there has been exported to
the other Provinces of cattle 1,060 head, valued
at £55,300; sheep, 11,900, valued at £11,241;
of horses, 190, valued at £3,820; of timber,
1,594,808 ft., valued at £12,500; of butter,
177,775 lbs., valued at £13,332, the value of
the few exports being £96,193. Add the value
of other articles of produce, and you will find
that the value of your exports is little short of
£130,000.

With the prospects thus before us of a satis-
factory and final settlement of the Native
difficulty—of the acquisition of large and valuable
tracts capable of maintaining a vast population—
and of ample means at our disposal to make
those waste lands available for the purposes of
colonisation, I do not hesitate to propose to you the
resumption of Immigration, and I do so the more
readily because experience has shown that the
fear that our population would be permanently
attracted to the gold fields is, in a great measure
groundless, and also because from the great
and increasing demand for our produce there
never was a time when labor was so scarce, or
when so large a number of immigrants could at
once find profitable employment.

It is a striking fact, as evincing the change of
public opinion in England on the subject of Emi-
gration, that after the colonies for so many years,
wholly unaided by the mother country, have been
spending large sums in removing to their shores
her surplus population, so powerful an agency as
the Colonial Emigration Society should now have
come forward to assist their efforts, by undertak-
ing both to select the emigrants and to contribute
to the cost of their passage. I simply propose
that we should avail ourselves of the services of
this Society, and should intimate to it, our readi-
ness to receive a certain number, either giving to
the Society as a bonus, say, from 20 to 25 per cent
on the passage money, or paying a moiety of the
passage money on the arrival of the immigrant
here, the Society taking for the Province a pro-
missory note for the amount. I also propose that
we should at once resume the system (formerly in
operation) under which settlers could send for
relatives and friends, with this modification, that
half the passage money be paid when the appli-
cation is made, and security given for payment of
the other moiety on the arrival of the party sent for.

Before dismissing this topic, I have to bring
under your notice that of the £2000 placed on the
Estimates last year as the amount likely to be
recovered from the immigrants on account of their
promissory notes, little more than £500 has been
collected, and at the same time frankly to admit
that the Government is open to grave censure for
the supineness they have all along evinced in en-
forcing payment of those notes, and more espe-
cially after your twice repeated instructions. No
doubt they have borne from a variety of motives;
they were at first anxious not to press upon the
immigrants until they had had time fairly to esta-
blish themselves: they believed that a sense of
personal self-respect and independence would
induce them, when the first difficulties of settle-
ment were overcome, freely to cancel their obliga-
tions to the Province; they did not anticipate that
any considerable number of them would willingly
consent to remain under the stigma of refusing to
repay a just debt, and from the recurring of which
they had with scarcely a single exception derived
such great advantages. But as soon as it became
evident, as it did two or three years since, that the
great majority were prepared to repudiate their
debt, then it was clearly the duty of the Govern-
ment to have taken those legal proceedings which
they have only recently instituted; but by which,
I believe, a very considerable amount will yet be
recovered; for while many are quite able to pay
off their debt at once, there are very few who
could not, without inconvenience,