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With the exception of a Representation Bill which I am obliged to introduce because the one passed last session did not, for technical reasons, receive the assent of His Excellency, there are no measures of importance to bring before you.

As this is the last session of the present Council I have only now to thank you for the uniform courtesy and kindness which I have ever received at your hands, and to express my earnest hope that the same good feeling and cordial co-operation may ever subsist between the Superintendent and Provincial Council.

I. E. FEATHERSTON,
Superintendent.

Superintendent’s Office,
18th of March, 1869.

Speech of His Honor the Superintendent on Proroguing the fifth session of the fourth Provincial Council of the Province of Wellington.

Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the Provincial Council,—

I beg to intimate that I have, on behalf of the Governor assented to the following Acts, viz:

An Act to enable the Superintendent to sell certain lots of the Reclaimed Land without again being put up to Public Auction.

An Act to amend the Volunteer Free Grants Act, 1867.

An Act to appropriate the Revenue of the Province of Wellington for the year commencing the first day of April, 1869, and ending the thirty-first day of March, 1870.

And I have reserved for the signification of His Excellency’s pleasure:

An Act to provide for the Management of the Manawatu Race Course.

An Act to re-adjust the Representation of the Province of Wellington in the Provincial Council.

It would have been gratifying to me before closing the present session if I had been able to announce that some progress had been made in quelling the Rebellion, and in re-establishing those friendly relations between the two races, upon which mainly depends the future of this Island; but in spite of the official despatches which are from time to time published proclaiming victories and predicting the speedy annihilation of those in arms against Her Majesty, we have yet to learn that a single decisive blow has been struck either on the East or West Coast. Te Kooti on the former, and Tito Kowaru on the latter, far from being conquered, are still to all intents and purposes masters of the position. They are being constantly surrounded but never are surrounded. We are constantly told that they are so completely hemmed in that their escape is impossible and yet they ever do escape without serious loss. They suspend and resume active operations just as they please; and in order to hold our own we are compelled to rely, not on our own purely colonial forces, but almost exclusively upon the friendly natives, whose allegiance to the Crown has for some time past been gradually sapped and undermined, and is still being daily alienated by the action of the Government. That we are dependent upon the friendly natives is sufficiently proved by the constant transport of them from the West to the East Coast, and then from the East to the West Coast. I repeat what I said in my opening address that this is a most dangerous game to play when the stake at issue is the lives of our fellow settlers in the outlying districts. Feeling so strongly as I do on this subject, it has been a source of great relief and gratification to me that you have so thoroughly endorsed my views by your rejection of the Resolution submitted to you in opposition to them.