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tion at Wellington, containing certain resolutions which they are anxious to have transmitted to your Lordship. 2. As the despatch of the Lieutenant-Governor affords apparently the information which your Lordship would require upon the greater number of the resolutions of the Association, it is only necessary for me to report upon those to which I now proceed to allude. 3. In their fourth resolution they state that I refused to allow the Legislative Council of this province to hold their annual sittings. Tour Lordship must be well aware that I should never have dared to commit such an act as this, but my Despatch No. 98, of the 20th September last, will have put your Lordship in possession of the circumstances under which the Lieutenant-Governor had found it impracticable to assemble a Council at the period he desired. 4. In the sixth resolution the Association affirm that Sir George Grey's act, in taking the intestate estates funds out of the hands of the Begistrar of the Supreme Court and placing them at the disposal of the Treasurer of the General Government, is calculated to destroy public confidence in their safe keeping, &c. It was with great pain I read this statement, made personally against myself by name, and deliberately assented to b) rMr. Fox, the New Zealand Company's Agent, who is a lawyer. The letter from the Colonial Treasurer, enclosed in the Lieutenant-Governor's despatch, will inform your Lordship that the very reverse of that stated by the resolution is the fact. It was the Judges who ordered that these funds should for safe custody be paid into the Colonial chest; and one of my first acts was to pass in the Council the enclosed orders (which are published in the collection of Colonial laws) to meet this case, directing that no such moneys should be received by the Treasurer except upon a Judge's order ; and that, having been once received, they should not be again paid out except upon the production of a Judge's order for that purpose. 5. I beg further to call your Lordship's attention to the Lieutenant-Governor's remarks upon the eighth resolution. The Government have here been by law deprived of all power over public lands or resources derived therefrom, and whilst the Principal Agent of the Company has neglected his most obvious duties to the public, he has, in the present instance, endeavoured to divert attention from himself by attacking the Government for not doing that which he really was alone able to do. I have, &c, The Bight Hon. Earl Grey, &c. ' G. Grey.

Enclosure 1 in No. 26. Lieutenant-Governor Eyre to the Goyebsob-dt-Chief. (No. 96.) Sib, — Government House, Wellington, 3rd October, 1850. I have the honour to transmit to your Excellency, at the request of Mr. John Dorset (as chairman of the Settlers' Constitutional Association, Wellington), a letter addressed to Earl Grey, forwarding to his Lordship certain resolutions said to have been unanimously passed by the Settlers' Constitutional Association of this place. 2. The resolutions alluded to are, many of them, so similar in character to those which were transmitted by the Constitutional Association last year (commented upon in my Despatch No. 111, of the 30th August, 1849) as to require but little additional remark from me now, and especially so as most of the subjects to which the resolutions relate are rather of a general character and relating to the General Government, than of a local nature and relating to the Provincial Government. 3. Some of the subjects touched upon, however, being of a local nature, will require a few observations ; and here I would first call your Excellency's attention to the statement that the resolutions were passed unanimously, and, in doing so, to bring under your notice a letter published in the following number of the Wellington Independent, 24th August, 1850, herewith transmitted from Mr. Godlev, guarding himself against a misconstruction which might possibly arise as to the significancy of his presence at the meeting of the Settlers' Constitutional Association on the 19th August, 1850, stating that his object in desiring to become a member of the Association, and in attending the meeting of Monday, was simply to identify himself in the most complete manner with those among his fellowcolonists who were seeking to obtain by legitimate and constitutional means the inestimable benefits of political freedom, and that he wished to be understood as assenting only to the first five of the resolutions passed on Monday as being those in which the principle above referred to is affirmed and illustrated. 4. The 6th resolution asserts that the local Government had twice suspended payment during the past year, and states by implication that the local Government " had appropriated for general purposes a considerable sum of money lying in the hands of the Sub-Treasurer of Nelson to the credit of the Intestate Estates Fund." In reference to the first of these statements, I beg to refer your Excellency to the enclosed letter of the Colonial Treasurer of the province, from which your Excellency will observe that the local Government have never once suspended payment, but have in two instances deferred paying the salaries of their own superior officers for a few days as a mere matter of convenience, whilst such deferred payments have never in any case exceeded the period of one month, so that even the officers in question have never been a longer period than two months without receiving their salaries in this province (three-monthly or quarterly payments being the ordinary ones in New Ulster). As regards the second statement, that the local Government had appropriated for general purposes a considerable sum of money lying in the hands of the Sub-Treasurer of Nelson to the credit of the Intestate Estates Fund, I can only say that no such appropriation has ever been made by my authority or directions, or with my consent or knowledge, whilst my Despatch No. 64, of the 15th August, 1850, with its enclosures, would have fully put your Excellency in possession of the circumstances upon which this statement is founded. 5. With regard to the Bth resolution, asserting that "the late melancholy accident at the Wairarana Lake is attributable to the neglect by the local Government of its proper and legitimate duties,"