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Coast. This metalled road has been completed through the northern portion of the same Seventy-Mile Bush district, and out of the same fund as the road leading from the neighbourhood of Masterton, through the southern portion of the Seventy-Mile Bush district, which has been left in the state I have described. In other words, the harbour of Hawke’s Bay has had its trunk line of communication with the interior established up to the south-western boundary of the Province (situated at the Manawatu Gorge), out of Colonial funds, by the General Government, during the last four years; whilst Port Nicholson is left without practical through communication along the line from Masterton to this same important mountain pass, through which a considerable portion of the traffic between the East and West Coasts must pass, viz., the Manawatu Gorge. The same Government which constructed one line might have constructed the other; a sum of £400,000 was voted and made chargeable on the Colony as a whole, for works of precisely the same character, inasmuch as the two lines converge to the one point, viz., the pass in the Manawatu; whereof one, viz., that leading from Napier, has been completed by the General Government at the cost of the Colony; whilst the other, viz., that leading from Wellington, is left unfinished. Even admitting that it was the case that the fund of £400,000 was insufficient for the completion of the latter line, no one can doubt that if the Government had proposed to supplement the vote it would have readily obtained Parliamentary sanction.

I now ask your attention to the progress made in connecting the Harbour of Wellington by railway communication with the interior. There are seven and a half miles leading from the port of Wellington, along the Wellington and Masterton line of railway, now open for traffic, viz., from E to F, as shown on the map; whilst, from the Port of Napier, eighteen miles of railway leading into the country are already open for traffic, viz., from G to H; being a distance nearly two and a half times greater in the latter case than in the former. You will quite understand that I make no complaint regarding the progress effected in the construction of either metalled roads, or railways, in the Province of Hawke’s Bay. I wish both of these means of communication had been even more largely extended there within the time, if that had been possible; and I offer no theory to account for the contrast between the progress made in this and the adjacent Provinces under Colonial administration. But the difference is very great indeed, and the question forces itself upon attention, whether equal exertion has been used to push forward the works in the one case as in the other? It is a question of the expenditure of money borrowed by the Colony, towards the payment of the interest due on which borrowed capital, the Province of Wellington contributes largely. If we can believe that the Colony will be able to borrow a few millions every second or third year; then I admit that the ratio of progress in different parts of the country in railway extension will resolve itself merely into a question of waiting; and although a slow pace in some parts of the country will be a drawback to those particular parts, in the meantime, (whilst a rapid progress is being made in other parts), yet, after all, it will, in the event supposed, be only a question of delay comparatively of limited duration. But, if it so happen that money in the future may not be obtained with the same facility, or in equal bulk as in the past; then, in that case, the question of ratio of progress of railway communication in different parts of the country becomes a very serious one. I should occupy too much time, if I were to pursue this question of the relative progress of railway construction in other parts of New Zealand; I believe however that the contrasts would be found still more striking. I have done my duty in calling your attention to the subject; as one vitally concerning the equable progress of the Colony at large, and of this part of the Colony in particular, with whose interests you are charged. After all the boast about a grand Colonial Policy, it is to be hoped that it is not intended that the Public Works Scheme of 1870, shall be administered in a mere narrow local spirit; and those who were among its firm supporters at the beginning will not be driven to the conclusion that a parody on the great constitutional maxim “that expenditure ought strictly to conform to votes” has been practised upon them.

I now invite you to consider the position of this Province with regard to the acquisition of Native territory for occupation and settlement. From J to K, extending along the north shore of Cook’s Straits, from Waikanae to the left bank of the Manawatu river, is a strip of country upwards of thirty miles in length and containing about 400,000 acres, occupied by a scanty and diminishing number of Natives and a sprinkling of Europeans. There are no regular roads and no bridges...