29

A.—3

necessary for qualifying them to take a part in the administration of local affairs ; and the possession of such a certificate will entitle the occupier of a tenement of adequate value, though he may not be able to fulfil the condition of reading and writing the English language, to be placed on the register of the borough and to exercise his franchise. This measure will apply, as you will not fail to observe, in the first place to foreigners of European origin naturalised according to the colonial laws. These settlers are said to be in general intelligent as well as industrious and orderly, although they may not be able to read and write the English language; and, as a general rule, you will naturally grant certificates to all of this class who apply for them, unless for special reasons which appear to your mind sufficient to justify their being withheld. It will apply in the next place to the Natives occupying tenements within the limits of boroughs, and it was with a view to these that the restriction was originally conceived. "With respect to them you have recommended in your despatch of the 3rd of May that the Governor should be empowered from time to time to name certain Natives who should have the privilege. It is the object of the additional Instructions which you will receive to carry into effect this recommendation, and accordingly the granting or withholding certificates to the Natives will be a matter on which you must exercise your own discretion, both as to any general rules to be established and as to their application to particular instances. Tou will easily understand that it is the very earnest wish of Her Majesty's Government to accelerate the coming of that time, which I hope it is not unreasonable to anticipate, when Her Majesty's subjects of all races in New Zealand may be brought together under the bond of common free institutions. There are, doubtless, many impediments in the way of the early realisation of such a prospect, which must strike the most ordinary observer, particularly those arising out of the peculiar character and circumstances of the Native race, which you have stated for my consideration ; still I hope I am not too sanguine in adding that, on the other hand, the aptitude of the New Zealanders for the acquisition both of knowledge and of wealth, the comparative ease with which a large part of the nation has liberated itself from the worst trammels of its former servitude —in a word, the superiority of their faculties to those of most other savages —justify the belief that the experiment may be tried, in their case, with encouraging prospects of final success. In the meantime, you will be able to observe the numbers and the dispositions of those who reside within the municipal districts. Of course I have as yet no information as to the extent of the different boroughs which you have probably by this time formed; but, assuming that their limits are such as I contemplated in framing the Instructions, I am inclined to suppose such resident Natives will not be so numerous or so unmanageable that they would be likely to obtain a preponderating or a mischievous influence in municipal elections, were they freely admitted to the register of burgesses. If lam right in this conjecture, your task of selection will be easier ; if otherwise, you will be able to preserve the proper balance by a more sparing and discriminating admission. It would be inconsistent with that free exercise of the elective franchise, without which it would have no value, if it were capable of being withdrawn at pleasure; such certificates, therefore, when once granted, will remain permanently in force, unless the holder should be convicted on any criminal charge which, in the opinion of the Court before which he is tried, may justify his being deprived of the municipal franchise, in which case this certificate will be cancelled. Such is the outline of the powers and trusts which will be vested in you by the measures now in preparation. The confidence which Her Majesty's Government reposes in you, justified by experience of your conduct under many trying and difficult circumstances, renders it, in my opinion, unnecessary to enter into minuter details. It is not without much regret that Her Majesty's Advisers have felt themselves compelled to recommend the temporary suspension of a measure which had received the sanction of Parliament, with their own full persuasion of its utility. They are not insensible to the evil of even delaying the adoptiou of those institutions which have extended themselves along with the extension of the British race, wherever established. A sense of what is due to the public safety could alone have induced them to sanction this departure from the plan originally chalked out for the domestic policy of the colony, and they rely on your assistance to render the period for which it is proposed that the Charter should be suspended an opportunity for preparing both settlers and Natives to fill duly the positions which will be respectively assigned to them by the Constitution under which they are to live. I have, &c, Governor Grey, &c. Geey.

No. 9. Copy of a Despatch from the Eight Hon. Earl Geey to Governor Geey. (No. 17.) Sib,— Downing Street, 18th March, 1848. Tou will receive herewith the Act to suspend for five years the operation of certain parts of an Act for making further provision for the government of the New Zealand Islands, which received Her Majesty's assent on the 7th of this month. The general scope of this measure, as well as the reasons on which it is founded, have been already explained to you in my despatch of the 30th November, insomuch that it only appears necessary now to add a few practical directions respecting some of its more important provisions. As I pointed out in the despatch above cited, it was intended to give you, and this Act confers, the power to keep on foot the Provincial Assembly for New Munster, if you should already have constituted one, by passing an Ordinance conferring on it the same powers which it possessed when constituted, or modifying those fpowers as may seem advisable. This, however, is a provision merely adopted in order to meet a possible contingency. I assume that it is more probable no such Provincial Assembly will have been constituted. In that case it will be in your power, if you and your Council think fit, to establish, in either or both provinces, legislative bodies of the kind described by yourself in your confidential despatch of 3rd May, 1847, wherein you express the opinion that a Council " composed of official and unofficial members, the unofficial members being elected by the inhabitants of the colony," would for the present be the form of Government best suited to the wants of the people, and in no respect repugnant to their feelings. It would be practicable also, as has been