NEW ZEALAND

GOVERNMENT GAZETTE,

(PROVINCE OF WELLINGTON.)

Published by Authority.

All Public Notifications which appear in this Gazette, with any Official Signature thereto annexed, are to be considered as Official Communications made to those persons to whom they relate, and are to be obeyed accordingly.

A. FOLLETT HALCOMBE,
Provincial Secretary.

VOL. XV. FRIDAY, JULY 17, 1868. No. 25.

Speech of His Honor the Superintendent on proroguing the Sixteenth Session of the Provincial Council.

Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the Provincial Council,—

I beg to intimate that I have on behalf of his Excellency the Governor assented to the following Acts:—

An Act to amend an Act of the Superintendent and Provincial Council, Session VIII No. 1, intituled “An Act to authorise the Superintendent to cause a Wharf to be erected in the harbour of Port Nicholson.”

An Act to amend an Act, intituled “An Act to shorten the notice of sale of certain lots on the reclaimed land in Wellington.”

An Act to appropriate the revenue of the Province of Wellington for a term commencing from the 1st day of April, 1868, and ending the 30th day of June, 1868.

An Act to grant a piece of land at Wanganui to the Freemasons.

An Act to re-adjust the representation of the province in the Provincial Council.

An Act to appropriate the revenue of the province for the year commencing the first day of April, 1868, and ending the 31st day of March, 1869.

An Act to authorise the Superintendent to appoint a commission to enquire into, consider and report upon the state of education and operation of the law for the establishment and management of common schools.

An Act to apply a sum not exceeding £5000 in extinguishing native title to land.

I have also to inform you that having reserved the “Act to authorise the Superintendent to raise by way of Mortgage a sum not exceeding £25,000 on the unreclaimed land in the Harbour granted to him under the Public Reserves Act, 1854” for the signification of the Governor’s pleasure thereon, His Excellency has been pleased to assent to the same.

These few and unimportant Acts, far from being a matter of reproach as the sole result of your labors during a somewhat protracted session, afford to my mind a strong proof of the adaptation of our Provincial Institutions to the peculiar circumstances of the colony, and of the thoroughly satisfactory manner in which the Legislature of this Province has discharged its important functions.

The almost entire absence of legislation during the present session, coupled with the equally entire absence on the part of the community of any complaints of its inadequacy or incompleteness, show that you have during the fifteen years of your existence most adequately provided by your enactments for all the present requirements of the province.

I congratulate you upon having during the present session, instead of postponing it to the eve of a general election, readjusted the representation upon a basis and in a manner which I think will meet with general approval. Holding as I do the opinion that there should be a certain definite period, within which the distribution of representation once made should be unalterable, I am glad that, by keeping in view the direction in which the future increase to your population will flow, you have rendered it extremely improbable that during the next few years any fresh re-adjustment will be either necessary or called for.

I have to thank you for not having burdened the estimates with a proposed expenditure which there was no reasonable prospect of meeting. I recognise in this your desire that the expenditure