✨ Provincial Council Prorogation Speech
Backed as I believe your opinion will be by the General Assembly, there is every reason to hope that the Imperial Government will not much longer calmly and unconcernedly look on the massacre of Her Majesty’s subjects, but that they will, by public opinion and feeling at home, be forced to afford such assistance as will speedily put an end to a war which is fast becoming one of extermination, and which, if much longer continued, will render peaceful relations between the two races well nigh impossible.
While I scarcely think it was fair to the electors of the Province to submit to an expiring Council, and in the absence of a single petition in support of it, a Resolution condemning existing institutions and proposing organic changes, I feel assured that the refusal of the Council to entertain the proposal, "that in the opinion of the Council the existing system of Provincial Government is no longer suitable to the requirements of the Province," will not only be hailed with satisfaction by the community at large, but I fear that the attempt to obtain such an expression of opinion will be viewed by them as an act of treachery—an attempt to steal a march upon them. It would indeed be strange if men, by whose exertions the large powers of self-government conferred upon the Colony in 1853 had been mainly won, and under which the whole of this Province has been so completely opened up and settled, should be willing to relinquish them—to betray the rights and liberties of their fellow settlers confided to their keeping—and to place them under a Central Government which has hitherto so signally failed to discharge its own proper functions, and which has brought the whole Colony to the very verge of ruin and destruction.
In view of the General Assembly meeting in May or June, I think you will probably agree with me that as soon as the Rolls of the new Electoral Districts have been formed, it will be advisable that no delay should take place in dissolving the present Council.
Though you have granted supplies for a year, I have no doubt that the Superintendent will not hesitate to convene the Council whenever the necessity may arise for having recourse to it.
I have now simply to thank you on behalf of the Province for the consideration you have, during four sessions, given to the measures brought before you, and to repeat my personal thanks for the kind courtesy ever evinced towards the head of the Executive.
I now declare that this Council stand prorogued.
I. E. FEATHERSTON,
Superintendent.
Superintendent’s Office, 6th April, 1869.
Printed under the authority of the Government of the Province of Wellington, by Thomas M’Kenzie, Printer for the time being to such Government.
Wellington Provincial Gazette 1869, No 15
✨ LLM interpretation of page content
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Superintendent's Speech on Proroguing the Provincial Council
(continued from previous page)
🏘️ Provincial & Local Government6 April 1869
Provincial Council, Wellington, Prorogation, Government, Electors, General Assembly
- I. E. Featherston, Superintendent