G—No. 2

To the Honourable the House of Representatives in Session assembled : The respectful Petition of the undersigned Electors and Inhabitants of the Province of Marlborough, sheweth : — That your Petitoners having now had experience of, are dissatisfied with the " New Provinces Act" passed by the General Assembly in the year 1858, under which this Province in which they reside has been severed from the Province of Nelson. That they find that, while it involves much that is unpleasant and entails great cost, it does not secure any exemption from those abuses and neglects, to prevent which was its ostensible object. That besides being too coetly, Provincial machinery is not workable in such a small area, where nearly every question directly affects the individual interests of those who have to deliberate upon it, and must therefore fail to obtain that calm, unprejudiced and impartial consideration which the same questions would receive in a large Province where the greater portion of the Council and Executive must necessarily be more aloof from such immediate influence : also, that in a Province like Marlborough, possessing only a small pastoral and agricultural population, there will not be found a desirable number of duly qualified persons who will, or can divert their time and attention from their regular pursuits, to the affairs of the Province ; consequently these are chiefly left to the hands of such individuals to whom the offices and salaries (which are thus certain. of being unduly increased) are objects. That the multiplication of small Provinces, while it may tend to give a temporary activity to local administration, tends no less to weaken the resources by which its efficiency must be maintained ; and burdens the General Government with an increase of establishments, which, though charged in the first place against the new Province, may ultimately bring that Province into debt to the General Government, without the means of liquidation. That, while it is admitted that remote districts of the old Provinces may have been neglected, it is evident that separation affords no guarantee against a repetition of such neglect on a smaller scale by the new Provinces towards their own remote districts ; and when such neglect exists, it would, upon the only principle of the New Provinces Act, be equally just to subdivide again and till at last the absurdity might be reached of the political institution of every sheep station and every family. • Your Petitioners have arrived at the conclusion that, though the New Provinces Act is lavish and exhaustive in its operation, it is no remedy for the neglect it was belived to cure and prevent ; and while they are far from denying the necessity of some guarantee being given by law against the neglect of the remote parts of a Province, they conceive that machinery for the purpose might easily be devised which would not be attended with any of the bad consequences which must necessarily flow from the continuance of the existing law on the subject. Your Petitioners therefore pray that your Honourable House will be pleased to revise the existing law, and to provide some other system obviating the difficulties which are alledged to have existed before its enactment. And your Petitioners will ever pray. W. H. Eyes, William Eeid, Jas. Sinclair, M.P.C., William Eeay, Thomas Wall, Charles Smith, James T. Robinson, Wm. Taylor, Alexander McLachlan, Joseph Dempsey, Eichard B. Scott, Thomas Warner, Henry Dodson, M.P.C., James Mclntosh, John O'Leary, Joseph Taylor, Eichd. Eead, Angus McKay, William Collie, A. B. Palmer, James Smith Carroll, Eobert Guest, David Scott, John Grim, Archibald Hamilton, Albin Close, James Gorrie, George Watson, William Wrigley, W. Henry Goslin, James Nosworthy, . J. Burke, John T. Eobinson, Le Bunn, William Shepheard, George Gibson, Eichard Kenny, William Howard Hall, John Henderson, John Kennedy, Eichard Doidge Nosworthy, Henry Gill, Henry Mears, W. Homes, Fredk. Adams, J. Walton, James Eeid, Daniel Peddin, John D. Leys, Charles Lucas,

PETITION OF ELECTORS AND INHABITANTS OF MARLBOROUGH.