per cent loan would not be placed on the market at a less discount than twenty per cent. In other words a million of four per cent guaranteed Bonds would realise from £1,050,000 to £1,075,000—a million of four per cent non-guaranteed Bonds would only fetch some £800,000. But the most eminent actuaries who have examined the conditions of the guarantee estimate the saving to the colony at a much higher sum.

Having, as you are already aware, accepted the appointment of Agent-General of the colony, and it being deemed desirable that I should proceed to England not later than the beginning of April, it is not my intention to bring before you any questions of policy, but only to submit to you two or three measures which cannot well be postponed. Nay, I think you will agree with me that holding as I do my office only pro tempore, that it is expedient that I should send in my resignation of the office I have held for nearly eighteen years, at the earliest possible date, and especially that it would be most unfair in me to attempt in any way to fetter the action of my successor. With this view I shall ask you to pass an Appropriation Act for the five months, commencing on the 1st of February and ending the 30th of June. This will afford ample time to my successor to ascertain the position of the province and its wants, to frame his policy, and to hold a session of the Provincial Council before the General Assembly meets.

Still I feel that in severing, for a time at least, my connection with the province, over which I have so long presided, I should ill requite the kind, the continuous, and the generous confidence reposed in me by my fellow settlers in strange and trying times, if I did not briefly glance at and record my opinions upon one or two of the great questions which either are occupying and perplexing the minds of the most thoughtful of our public men, or which possess an immediate and pressing interest to yourselves; and I feel that I am specially bound to place before you the present financial position of the province and its prospects for the future.

I am free to admit that owing mainly to the financial embarrassments in which the province has for some time been involved, there is a strong feeling that our provincial institutions are no longer capable of discharging their colonising functions; that some modifications, some organic change in them is absolutely necessary, if indeed it be not expedient to abolish them altogether and to hand the province with all its assets and liabilities over to the Colonial Government. I need not say that I do not participate in this feeling, that I hold no such opinions, that I dissent entirely from such views. On the contrary, I hold that at no period since the Constitution was brought into operation in 1853 has it ever been more essential to maintain your provincial institutions in all their integrity.

Is it true that they have failed in the great work of colonisation specially confided to them? The following facts among others appear to me to furnish a sufficient and complete answer. From 1853 up to the present time the whole of your territorial receipts and to within the last three or four years at least one-third of your ordinary revenue has been applied to public works and immigration, in addition to the application to the same objects of the whole of your loans. And what have been the results? You have constructed nearly 400 miles of road; you have bridged many of your most important rivers. You have constructed great harbor works, and have reclaimed from the sea a valuable estate in this city. You have doubled your population; and let it not be forgotten that these results have been obtained in spite of wars and insurrections, for which this province at least can in no way, in no degree, be held responsible, but from which its inhabitants have been the chief sufferers—I mean sufferers both in the sacrifice of life and property.

But those who are the most strenuous advocates of a change have never yet indicated in what direction it should be made—have never yet shown that any other system would be simpler, more economical, or more efficient. Some, indeed, urge the abolition of the office of Superintendent; but if you did so, would not his duties have to be discharged by some other officer, say an agent appointed by the General Government, and probably paid a higher salary than that given to the Superintendent. Abolish the Provincial Council, and substitute for it County Boards is another suggestion often heard, but where would be the saving in this? The Provincial Legislature costs only some £700 a year. I venture to think that County Boards with paid chairmen, and staffs of officers, would be vastly more expensive, and far less efficient. Then with respect to other departments essential to the order, peace, and good government of the province, such as the gaol, police, hospitals, harbour, and other departments which must be kept up, you will find it difficult, if not impossible, to apply the pruning knife to any of them, for they are all underpaid and short-handed. If you don’t or can’t maintain them, the General Government must and will, but at the sole cost of the province, even if it be necessary to impose additional and special taxation upon its inhabitants.

Dismiss from your minds any idea that by declaring your inability or unwillingness to carry on the provincial institutions, that you will lessen the burdens of the people; for I scarcely imagine that it will be contended by anyone that the administration of any General Government has ever been as economical as that of the Provincial, or that your affairs will be better managed by a Government over which you can exercise no direct control or supervision than by a body which is directly responsible to you, and over whom you possess absolute and unlimited control.

Let us compare the expenses of the Provincial Government with the expenditure charged by the General Government against the Province. In the Provincial Blue Book, Session X, 1863, was first published the annual expenditure for the previous year—a practice which has since been continued. If we take the expenditure of the Provincial Government in 1863 and contrast it with the expenditure for the latest period for which accounts are before the Council, viz., 1869-70, we find that while the ordinary expenses of the Provincial Government were in 1863 £14,546; they amounted in 1869-70 to £18,781—the population at the former period being 13,643, at the latter, 25,000. The increase in the expenditure (and this exclusively in the departments connected with Gaol, Police, Hospital, &c., for there are very considerable decrease in the Executive and Legislative) is 30 per cent., the increase in the population being 84 per cent. Now let us compare the charges made against the province by the General Government in 1862-3 with those made in 1870-1. In the former year they amounted to £10,275, in 1870-1 they are £33,533 being an increase of 226 per cent. The charges for 1870-1 exhibit an increase of no less than £5,800 over the charges of the previous year 1869-70. These figures speak for themselves and prove conclusively both that the expenditure of the General Government increases more rapidly than that of the Provincial and also that your financial difficulties are mainly owing to the enormous increase in the charges made by the General Government against the province.