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and the best opportunities of ascertaining the state of public opinion amongst the colonists. The broad outlines of the1 scheme having been partly drawn by Parliament, and the Queen in Council being authorized to complete these outlines, Her Majesty was also empowered to delegate to the Governor-in-Chief the duty of filling up all the various details ; and so wide are these powers of delegation as to supply a remedy for any errors of mere ignorance or oversight into which Her Majesty's Confidential Advisers may have unconsciously fallen. I now transmit to you four instruments for carrying this Act of Parliament into effect. Of these, the first is a new Charter for the Government of New Zealand. It is little more than a mere creation of the powers, municipal, legislative, and administrative, which the Act of Parliament authorizes the Queen so to create. It repeals the Charter of 1810, leaving it, however, to the Governor-in-Chief to determine at what time the new Charter shall be promulgated and brought into operation. Tou will observe that the Act of Parliament, enables Her Majesty for a limited time to continue in force, as regards the Province of New Ulster, the Charter of 18-10. When this measure was submitted to Parliament, there seemed reason to believe that it might be desirable to make a distinction between the northern, and the southern settlements with regard to the time at which the intended change in the form of government should come into operation ; but more recent information has led to a different conclusion, and accordingly Her Majesty has not been advised to avail herself of the power with which she was invested in this respect. The second instrument is the series of Instructions under the Royal Signet and Sign-Manual to which the Charter refers. This, as will appear in the sequel, is the instrument in which the plan of the new r Constitution is exhibited in all the detail in which it has been possible to prepare it in this country. Technical reasons, into which I need not enter, render it highly convenient to make the Instructions, rather than the Charter, the channel signifying the Royal pleasure at full length and circumstantially. The third of the accompanying documents is your own appointment as Governor-in-Chief of New Zealand, and as Governor of each of the provinces into which those Islands will be divided. The fourth and last instrument constitutes Mr. Eyre Lieutenant-Governor of each of the twro provinces which it is now proposed to establish. It may be convenient that I should in this place point out how vacancies in these offices are to be filled provisionally whenever the necessity for such provisional appointments may arise. If the Governor-in-Chief should die, or otherwise create an une.xpected vacancy, the following is the order in which the various officers capable of a provisional succession will be called to it, each later designation always supposing the absence from New Zealand of any person bearing the immediately preceding designation. In the case supposed, then, the provisional succession will devolve, first, on the Governor of New Ulster ; secondly, on the Governor of New Munster; thirdly, on the LieutenantGovernor of New Ulster, if appointed immediately by the Queen; fourthly, on the LieutenantGovernor of New Munster, if appointed immediately by the Queen ; and, fifthly, on the senior officer for the time being in command of the Queen's troops in New Zealand. On the death, or absence, or other vacancy of the office of the Governor of either province, his office will be filled by the Lieutenant-Governor of it. On the death, or absence, or other vacancy of the office of LieutenantGovernor of either province, the vacancy will be filled provisionally by an officer to be appointed by the Governor-iu-Chief. I have already observed that Lieutenaufc-Governors so appointed will not stand in the line of provisional succession to the General Government. Provision being thus made for establishing the municipal, the legislative, and executive institutions of New Zealand, there is a virtual accomplishment of all that is necessary for its future government. Erom these institutions will flow all subordinate powers, judicial, fiscal, magisterial, or of whatever other nature they may be. The respective Legislatures will progressively mould these derivative organs of government into such forms as the exigencies of society will require. To a great extent it will be competent to those Legislatures so to mould even the institutions which the Charter itself creates, by regulating the elective franchise and the whole system of elections, municipal and legislative ; care being taken that no such enactments be either repugnant to the text, or at variance with the spirit, of the Act or of the Charter. To prescribe fundamental rules, and to create an authority for the better adaptation of them to the real wants of the colony, is the only function which the Queen or Parliament have assumed to themselves, or could properly have assumed. At first sight it may appear that something more than this has been aimed at in the accompanying Royal Instructions. They are unavoidably copious and minute; but they will be found rather to impart powers than to lay down inflexible rules ; and so wide is the field over which the subject ranges that even to accomplish this design has unavoidably led into many elaborate and protracted details. To render those details as clear and as useful as may be, they are drawn up not in the usual form, but in a series of chapters, each of which is subdivided into sections, the whole being introduced by one comprehensive reference to the powers under which the Instructions are issued, and by one equally comprehensive declaration of the Royal pleasure that they shall be observed. Much tautology and useless repetition is thus avoided. Believing that the Instructions, as thus prepared, will be found to convey their meaning perspicuously and completely, I abstain from any attempt to recapitulate or to explain their provisions. I turn to other topics on which it seems indispensable that on the present occasion I should convey to you explanations for which, of course, no appropriate place could be found in the legal instruments already mentioned. I advert especially to what relates to the aborigines of New Zealand, and the settlement of the public lands in those Islands. I cannot approach this topic without remarking that the protracted correspondence to which it has given rise, the public debates and resolutions which have sprung from it, and the enactments and measures of your predecessors in the Government, have all contributed to throw into almost inextricable confusion the respective rights and claims of various classes and individuals amongst the inhabitants of New Zealand, to render very embarrassing the inquiry in which you must doubtless be engaged respecting the line of conduct which Her Majesty's Government expect you to pursue, and, at the same time, to make it almost impossible for us to determine, with any confidence, what that conduct 2—A. 3.