A.--3

8

of the design at present entertained. It is proposed to address to the same person the commissions of Governor-in-Chief and of Governor of either province, and to address to another person the commissions of Lieutenant-Governor for each. Although, with a view to precision and to various technical considerations, all the offices in question are mentioned in the Charter as distinct, they will thus (at least for the present) be combined in the hands of two persons only. Of these, the highest—who will be at once Governor and Governor-in-Chief—will be the official superior of the other, who will be designated in each province as the Lieutenant-Governor of it. The relation will not be one of mere precedency and rank, but will carry with it effective authority on the one hand, with subordination and obedience on the other hand. To the Governor-in-Chief it will belong exclusively to correspond with Her Majesty's Secretary of State having the Department of the Colonies. To the Lieutenant-Governor it will belong to correspond exclusively with the Governor-in-Chief. The authority and control exercised by the Secretary of State over the Governor-in-Chief will by the Governor-in-Chief be exercised over the Lieutenant-Governor. That authority will extend even to the suspension of the Lieutenant-Governor from office, if unhappily the necessity for so extreme a measure should ever arise. The Governor-in-Chief will fix his own place of residence according to his own estimate of the greater or less demand for his own presence in one or in the other province. But, wherever he may be, he still acts as Governor of the province in which he may be resident, and as Governor-in-Chief of the whole of .New Zealand, directing and controlling the acts of the Lieutenant-Governor as often as he may think any such control or direction requisite. To provide for the administration of the Executive Government of either province from which the Governor-in-Chief may absent himself, it will be in his choice, according to his view of the exigencies of the public service, either to call on the Lieutenant-Governor to reside and act for him there, or to appoint a Lieutenant-Governor for the purpose, whose appointment will be made to terminate on the Governor-in-Chief's return and resumption of his own office as Governor of the province for which such temporary appointment may have been made. Tou will find that the necessary powers for this purpose are created by the Charter. In favour of this scheme of municipal, legislative, and executive polity, I rely on the following considerations: It is framed with as close an adherence as circumstances would allow to the model of our English institutions, an object which I regard as of the highest importance in every such design. It adheres as nearly as practicable to that scheme of colonial policy once diffused over the greater part of the North American Continent, and still surviving in our remaining colonies there, and yet to be distinctly traced in the Constitutions of the flourishing States now united into the great American commonwealth. It provides for the local self-government of districts in a country where the dispersion of the settlements is such as to render any one central authority incompetent to that task. But while public spirit and a practical acquaintance with public affairs will thus be cherished in every part of -New Zealand, the erection of provinces and Provincial Assemblies will, I trust, counteract the tendency which such corporate institutions must otherwise have to disunite, in interest and in feeling, the various and remote districts from each other. Natural causes forbid the combination of all those districts in the choice of members to serve in a single Assembly for the whole of New Zealand, but two such Assemblies at present, and perhaps more than two such hereafter, may be sufficient to consolidate and cement and protect the interests of the various separate boroughs. To prevent those intercolonial contests of such frequent occurrence elsewhere, and to watch over the general interests of the whole country, the General Assembly is charged with the exclusive care of those interests and with no other function. The circumstance that the General Assembly will consist of members chosen by the Provincial Assemblies out of their own number will, I hope, prove an effectual security against the otherwise too probable conflicts between the local and the general Legislatures. I anticipate, however, that for some time to come the occasions which will arise for calling together the General Legislature will be exceedingly rare, and the amount of business to be transacted by it very small; it will only be necessary that it should meet when some change is required in the existing law upon those subjects with which the separate Legislatures will not be competent to deal. By placing the Corporations and the Houses of Bepresentatives in the relation of constituents and representatives of each other, they will have such common interests, with so much of mutual control, as probably to maintain them both in the possession of their appropriate powers without the risk of encroachment on either side. The scheme of executive government which I have briefly explained will assure to the various authorities, municipal and legislative, of New Zealand, the benefit to be derived from unity of purpose and uniformity of system in the conduct of the administrative branch of the public service. To this project it has been objected that it introduces a system too complicated to be easily understood or efficiently executed. The answer to that objection, I think, is that the inevitable conditions of the practical problem to be solved were more than usually numerous and complex. So wide is the extent of the whole territory, so remarkable the dispersion of the settlements there, so many the impediments to rapid intercourse between them, and so strangely contrasted the habits and characters of the different races of the inhabitants, that it became necessary at least to attempt the reconcilement of opposite and yet co-existing dangers. There was the danger of enervating all the springs of Government by the undue dispersion of separate authorities, and there w ras the danger of impeding the useful action of the Government by an undue centralization of its powers. In the Act which was submitted to and sanctioned by Parliament, Her Majesty's Government attempted as far as possible to escape from both of these difficulties. Whether the scheme adopted affords the best attainable reconcilement of them or not, it will scarcely be denied that they were serious difficulties, and admitted of no safe solution of a short and simple character. But in framing the Act Her Majesty's Government were not forgetful of their extreme liability to error when acting in reference to a state of things so remote from their observation, and from their own personal experience in the business of civil administration. It was therefore studiously provided that the adaptation of this law to the local circumstances of New Zealand should be transferable to those who would bring to the discharge of that duty the greatest amount of local knowledge,