A.—9

In the cases of colonies whose accounts are too small to require a fixed annual payment for the general business, the contribution towards the expenses of the Agency will be in the form of a commission of five per cent, on all orders executed by the Agents, irrespective of loans and investments. This commission will continue to be demanded from all colonies employing the Agents, except those hereafter specified, and I could have wished that some analogous principle' could have been fairly applied to colonies whose transactions are on a large scale. But the variety of the business which is represented by these larger accounts is such as to render it impossible to treat them on any uniform rule ; and I have been unwillingly obliged to adhere to the present mode of assessment, by which the colonies named in the annexed list are required to pay a fixed annual sum, determined from time to time by Her Majesty's Government, with the advice of the Crown Agents, who alone are cognizant of the character of the different accounts, and based partly on the relative amounts of those accounts, and partly on the more or less laborious character of the business which they involve. The amounts of these fixed payments will continue in the cases of those colonies where fixed payments are now made at the existing rates, except in the cases of Victoria, Hong Kong, and Natal, to which separate despatches will be addressed. 6. Any service of a totally exceptional character (like the railway business of Ceylon and Mauritius) will form the subject of a separate arrangement. 7. If your Government should have any observations to make upon these arrangements, so far as they affect it individually, I have to instruct you to bring them under my notice. The arrangements described in this despatch will take effect from Ist January of the present year. I have, &c, The Officer Administering the Government, New Zealand. Newcastle. By Authority : Geobgb Dibsbuet, Government Printer, Wellington. Price, 3d.]

Colonies paying fixed contributions :—

Victoria, Ceylon, Cape of Good Hope, Mauritius, Trinidad, British Guiana, Tasmania, Malta, Sierra Leone, Gibraltar, Gambia, Natal, Hong Kong.

2