PETITION OF WILLIAM CARGILL, ESQ., SUPERINTENDENT OF THE PROVINCE OF OTAGO, RELATIVE TO SEPARATION OF THE DISTRICT OF MURIHIKU FROM THE PROVINCE OF OTAGO.

Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1858 Session I, G-02

G—2.

PETITION OF WILLIAM CARGILL, ESQ., SUPERINTENDENT OF THE PROVINCE OF OTAGO, RELATIVE TO SEPARATION OF THE DISTRICT OF MURIHIKU FROM THE PROVINCE OF OTAGO.

{Ordered to be printed May 18, 1858.)

AUCKLAND: 1858.

2

TO THE HONORABLE THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIFES OF NEW ZEALAND. The Petition of William Cabgill, Superintendent of tire Province of Otago; Sheweth, — That certain inhabitants of a Districts in the Province of Otago having been moved to exercise the right of Petition to your Honorable House, and which Petition being to the effect of praying for a severance of their district and its erection into a separate province, it is respectfully craved, for the following reasons, that such Petition be not considered without a call upon the Provincial Council—the Representatives of the whole Province—to be heard for the general interests, and also in respect of rs alleged by the Petitioners against that Council and the Executive Government. Ist. Because Otago being recognised by the Constitution Act as one of the six Provinces of New Zealand, and the General Assembly having placed it as such under pecuniary and Govermental resposibilities, which responsibilities has been undertaken and acted upon accordingly, the severance of a part would of necessity affect the whole Province, which is therefore entitled to be heard in the matter ; and the more so, because of its pecuniary engagements to the General and Imperial Governments. 2nd. Because it will be shewn that the Provincial Legislature in accepting the trust, had instantlyengaged a powerful staff for Exploratory, Surveys, and which Surveys were in the first instance effected in the Southern part of the Province, within which the district of the Petitioners is situated. And that this was done at an extra cost of £6000, as shewn by the map and accompanying Reports transmitted to the General Government in March 1857. And the same staff having then been directed to the rest of the Province, a map of the whole will have been completed, and sent up to the General Government with six weeks of the present date, and which map, with the Surveyor's Report, will be found to give a widely different view of the compactness and physical unity of the Province, in all its parts, from what the Petitioners had entertain3d when they signed the Petition, and before the could have had a right knowledge even of their own locality. The extra cost on this second year of Exploratory Surveys has exceeded £8000. But this was not all. An inland Post has been established at a present cost of £700 a year through the whole length of the Province, and which places its every district (including of course that of the Petitioners) in communication with the Government. The mail is now carried 50 miles by a light cart, and this mode of conveyance will embrace the whole line within another year. The monies voted for Roads &c. have been distributed in strict relation to local wants, and are being applied in each district (including again that of the Petitioners) at the hands of locally elected Trustees, in addition to such further sums as each district sees fit to rise by local assessment for its own Bye-Roads. And an act of the Legislature wholly unsought by the Petitioners has obtained the assent of the Governor for their electing of two members to the Provincial Council, whilst a local Land Office and Resident Surveyor have also been planted in the district. But the expenses referred to, together with those for public buildings, and preliminary Harbour works, for the purpose of floating a wild but very hopeful province, have in addition to the whole Revenue, been covered by borrowed monies under the sanction of the Governor : and for which the whole Revenues of Land and Customs are responsible as a first charge ; and the severance therefore of any part of a province so circumstanced is perhaps a graver matter than the Petitioners seem to have thought of. 3rd. Because a reference to the circumstances of the district in question, not upon imaginary but recorded statistics, and a solid consideration of them, must prove that with a Customs Revenue which hardly covers the expense of collection and a modicum of Land Sales—for the district is chiefly or almost entirely pastoral, and must no doubt continue so for an indefinite time to come—it could neither repay nor give valid security for its portion of past outlay, «* have any means of further carrying out the colonization of its proposed territory. It is the decided opinion of your Petitioner, as Superintendent of the Province, that the Petitioners have been misled, and that if called upon to consider and concur in a proper arrangement with the Provincial Government (which ought to have been a first step) it would so far open the whole subject as to cause a general withdrawal from the Petition. The Bluff Harbour is more isolated from the adjoining territory than Port Lyttelton from the Canterbury plains, is in fact a mere Harbour of Refuge, and so much so, that in sending a ferry boat to the Mataura River it had to be taken to the New Rivetby sea, and thence by dray to its station, the only other route being by dray from the Clutha. which

3

Q— 2

would be longer and more costly. And the true cause of the infrequeney of vessels to that Coast generally, is that of its scanty population and small consumption, that their district has been at all neglected is without a shadow of foundation. On the contrary it has been fully cared for, and had the largest proportion of public money, because of its being the newest and weakest of all. And it would therefore in the event of a separation, be all the more helpless because burdened with a debt for money which it could not have borrowed of itself and would now hastily turn into a hindrance in place of a source of progress. 4th. Because the splitting of the Province into districts, each having its separate and independent Government, in place of being united under one Council of Representatives, with municipal institutions for the local affairs of each district, as at present, would be adverse to progress. The Clutha district, for instance, with its inland navigation and noble basin of rich and accessible land, including gold as on the Mataura, or what is more to the purpose, its coal, the most massive and economically workable for shipment in the Province, might, if wished for, present a fas more feasible claim, but then it would cease to be a help to its weaker neighbour on the South, where the increase by lambings, the staple of the Province, as yet only reaches the average of 30 per cent (as jointly certified by the Chief Inspectors) whilst that of the Clutha and onward, to the latitude of Dunedin averages 80 per cent, and north of Dunedin above 80. On all these grounds your Petitioner craves that the Legislature of Otago be heard in the matter in such form as to your Honorable House may seem fit. And your Petitioner shall ever pray. W. CARGILL, Superintendent of Otago. Auckland, April, 1858.