Wallingford January 12th/65 My dear McLean, I am sorry to hear from you that you have been again a sufferer but hope you are yourself again now. Weber has just been up here and I took advantage of the opportunity to question him as to the Taupo road and the part situate in our Province - I find that the bad bush we talked of when In Auckland and which we thought was in the Auckland Province is in our own. From the queries I put to him I ascertained that provided £40,000 or £50,000 (the amount you name) is appropriated on the Auckland road that about £20,000 or £30,000 would have to be spent in our Province now this makes the question, in a financial point of view, as regards the Province, very different to what I at any rate thought of when in Auckland when we met Weld on the subject. And I think that if anything like the amount I have named or the half of it be likely to be chargeable to this Province that we must decline to burden the Province with it. We have already chargeable upon our Revenue. The Wellington Debt which will not be probably less ultimately than the amount we already pay. £2,500 the land purchase fund another £2,000 and the Loan at present unnegotiated £3,600 Making a total of over Eight thousand a year, that we have to pay or shall have to pay almost immediately in the shape of Interest or liabilities. With this state of things staring us in the face we must in my opinion decline to further burden ourselves with another £2,000 or £3,000 a year for a purpose which is no doubt politically a most important one, not however particularly to Hawkes Bay, but to the Northern Island of New Zealand. I admit that the question of ultimate liability is not certain, but in my opinion the risk is infinitely too great for us to run for a purpose which will never from the advantages derived from it, refund, or be worth, to Hawkes Bay the amount it will cost her. I shd. say that the fairest thing to say to Ministers wd. be that on enquiry we have found that the amount that wd. chargeable to this Province is so greatly in ezcess of what we expected that it is impossible for us to accept the liability of it - that we simply couldn't pay it. For with the prospect (now that the Native Lands Bill is in force) of no considerable land Revenue for the future it wd. absorb a large proportion of our available Revenue. And that altho' we would be ready to go as far as we consider the Province could that that limit wd. be at the very outside that we shd. be chargeable with no more than £1000 for this purpose and that we could only agree to that on the understanding that the Road wd. be completed by Govt. to Auckland in fact that the political purpose for which we alone are ready to incur liability shd. be carried out in its entirety - this is in fact the sort of understanding (such as it was) that we had with Fitzherbert but my advise is to have a written and decided understanding with Ministers from the security of the Province in relation to this subject. I have written you at this length upon this matter because I deem it one of the greatest importance I am not at all satisfied that the Provincial Council ought not to be appealed to for its opinion before any heavy liability is accepted for the Province. The opinion which I individually hold of the value to this Province of the Auckland road is that in any other than a political sense it is valueless - what I mean is that it will not be worth £500 a year to us probably in our life times. But I thoroughly enter into its value as a Political operation and in that sense I believe it to be the most necessary work to be undertaken in the Northern Island of far more political importance for instance than the road from Tarranaki to Wanganui. For this strikes a line through and opens up the whole of Maoridom whilst the other is simply necessary as a means of chastisement to a troublesome tribe. I shall be anxious to hear from you on this subject and the view you take of it. I have written so much on this head that I have no room for more. In noting what you write me of the Taupo natives being desirous of land selling It occurs to me as extremely desirable for land to be bought there intrinsically I shd. say land there was worthless - What do you think of representing this view to Govt. and getting them to authorise purchases to be made as at Tauranga for political purposes with Gen. Govt. funds this appears to me worth thinking of. In haste yr. very truly J. D. Ormond