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New Zealander, Volume 10, Issue 887, 14 October 1854, Page 3

A Government Gazette, issued since our last, continues the publication of the Actsof the General Assembly, in conformity with the 'requirement of tlie 60th clause of the Constitution - ct, which provides that every Act of the Assembly assented to by the Governor shall be printed in the Gazette for general information, and that “ such publication by such Governor of any such Act shall be deemed to be in Law the promulgation of the same.” “The Appropriation Act, 1854.” is the only o: e contained in this Gazette■ We perceive that the publication is not kept up in the exact numerical order, as ibis isj\o. 11, leaving an unsupplied interval from No. 5, up to which the order had been preserved. Of course the others will speedily appaer, and practical! y it cau be of no mo-

ment whatever, —except indeed that it is obviously desirable to give precedence to those of greatest importance or must immediate operation. The Preamble recites the provisions of the Constitution Act relating to the control of the General Assembly over all Revenues arising from taxes, duties, fates, and imposts, levied in virtue of any Act of the General Assembly, and from the disposal of the Waste Lands of the Crown ; together with the provision that the surplus not appropriated by the General Assembly shall he di- , vided among the several Provinces ; setting forth, however, the important fact th> t no specific provision had been made by the Constitution Act for the appiopriation of the Revenues raised under the Colonial Ordinances enacted previously. It then proceeds to enact that, out of Her Majesty's Revenue arising from the Post Office, the Customs Duties, the Fees and Fines of the Supreme Court, and the Land Revenue, after and subject to the payments for which the Constitution Act itself provides, there shall b? paid for the support of the Civil Establishments, &c. of the Government, tie sum of £36,497} 7 s - The gross amounts granted for the several Departments for which the Act makes provision are then specified; and although, in our summaries of the current proceedings of the House of Representatives, we have already stated these sums, it may be convenient to our readers to see them here in their collective form, as they appear in the Appropriation Act itself. —

Clauses iollow which are merely the business regulations for carrying out the Appropriation ; they authorise the Colonial Treasurer to pay the several sums to such prisons fur the purposes previously mentioned, and in such proportions, as the Governor shall by Warrant cl.rect; and provide that he (the Treasurer) shall be allowed credit in his accounts for the sums so paid. Another clause is virtually a repetition of the provision of the Constitution Act that the surplus of the Revenues shall he divided among the Provinces “in like proportions as the gross proceeds of the said Revenues shall have arisen therein respectively." After the Appropriation Act, we find in the Gazette the “ Retails” of the sums voted for the several Departments, the totals of which only are included in the Act. This document is given as an “ Extract from the Minutes of the proceedings of the House of Re-presentatives,”—-a significant heading, which cannot but suggest the recollection that the Estimates were not laid before tire Legislative Council, and that, in point of fact, there is not a single item in the entire List of detailed votes which can properly be said to have passed into Law, inasmuch as nothing can be Law unless it Iras received the assent of the three Branches of the Legislature, which these voles certainly did not receive —amlevidently indeed could not receive,—' because they were not embodied or ever annexed or referred to in the Bill which was sent down to the Legislative Council. . That Bill simply provided that certain gross, suras might be paid for certain services ; but it did not prescribe the proportions in which they should be distributed, amongst particular persons or offices connected with those services;—it only enacted that the sums shoud be paid in such proportions as the Governor,' or the Officer administering the Government for the time being, should direct. Our readers have had an opportunity of seeing a somewhat full elucidation of this point in the Report of the proceedings of the Legislative Council, on the day,—or rather the nightpreceding the Prorogation, which appeared in the New-Zealandeb of the 27th ult, ; and we would refer them especially to the observations made during that discussion by the Attorney-General, Mr. Whitaker, J and Mr, Bell, for clearly and forcibly expressed views of the position in which the Expenditure of the year was paced by the course which the dominant majority in the Mouse of Representatives thought fit to pursue with inspect to the Estimates, and which (as was explicitly stated in the series of Resolutions proposed by Mr. Whitaker) the Council acquiesced in only because —the Bill having been transmitted to them within the last hours of the Session,—there was no alternative but either wholly to reject it, or to consent to pass it in the form in which it was transmitted. It will be remembered that, on the motion of Mr. Bell, a Resolution was adopted declaring the “ extreme reluctance.” with which the Legislative Council agreed to an Act ‘ which places large sums of money at the absolute disposal of the Executive Government, the particular mode of appropriating those sums not having be.-n prescribed by the Act.” The probability, or certainty, that the Executive Government will take no unjust advantage of this state of things, however satis factory and assuring it may be to the colonists, does not affect the opinion to be formed of the legislation which left so important a matter in such an anomalous condition.

But in addition to this—which, under existing circumstances we consider rather of theoretical than of immediately practical moment,— there are other 'considerations of very grave seriousness connected with this Act. No one who calls to mind the conciliatory tone which the Officer administering the Government maintained throughout the Sessions, notwithstanding the continued and strong provocations to a contrary irk which he i eceived from the Fitzgeivld-Sowell m jority of the House of Representatives, can doubt that His Excellency fe't himself impelled by imperative duty to speak as he did of this measure in his Address on proroguing the Assembly. We may be assured that it was upon no light or insufficient grounds that His Excellency made the Appr op nation Bill an exception” to the approval which he was ;ble to give to all the other measures presented for ins acceptance, and intimated that only the lateness ot the period at which it was presented to him prevented his exercising, with regard to that Bill, the power vested in him*by the Const! -

tulion Act “to make such amendments as the may think expedient in any Bill presented for his assent, and to return it with such amendments for the further consideration of the House. His Excellency'ssubsequnt remarks on the Act pointed to two matters of moment, — the exclusion of any provision for services which he had recommended and the reasons for providing which had been explained ; and ihe attempt to determine, in an incidental and indirect manner, the question of the apportionment of Legislative and Executive power between the General Government and the Provincial authorities, —a subject clearly of the utmost magnitude ; one which, in his Opening Address on the 27th of May, His Excellency had enlarged upon as a subject that might be “ expected to occupy a large portion of the First Session of the General Assembly,” and which therefore it was perfectly consistent on his part, as well as demonstrably right in itse f, that he should describe in his Closing Address, on the 17‘ H of September, as one which “ ought rather to be determined by a permanent enactment, to which, after full discussion, and with ample time for consideration, all the three branches of. the Legislatuie should have given their'deliberate assent.” We could without much difficulty cite instances and adduce arguments showing the justice'and applicability of these strictures ; but other, and probably better, opportunities for doing so will present themselves when the proceedings of the several Provincial Councils (now, we presume , on the verge of meeting in all ihe Provinces] shall be before he public. It may, and we trust will, be found that the General Executive Government and the Provincial Governments, in their respective spheres of action and authority, will be able and disposed to guard ilie public interests and secure the efficient maintenance of the public service ; but their doing so, however successfully the object may be accomplished, will not redeem the “ Appropriation Act 1854” from the character ol “ hasty” legislation which, in more than one aspect.it has borne from the outset, and still unmista k eably bears.

£ B. d* Land Purchase Department . , E373 15 0 Post Office . 4076 0 0 Interest on Debentures . . . , 2225 17 0 Pensions . . • • 250 0 0 Governor’s Establishment 64.3 IB 0 General Assembly, Building, &c. 0996 0 0 Colonial Secretary’s Department, Colonial Trcasury, and Bank of Issue 66 5 0 0 Supreme Court . 1590 0 0 Native Secretary’s Department, Auckland. Nalive Assessors and Policemen at New Plymouth .... 1037 0 9 Hospitals . 2070 0 0 Miscellaneous .... 4170 19 0 Schools— Church of Rome .... 600 0 0 Wesleyan Body . . . 700 0 0 Service, Chatham Islands . . . T)00 0 0 Vaccination ..... 500 0 0 Donation to the family of the late Mr. Coates late Clerk to the House of Representslives ..... 200 0 0 Inter-Provincial Postal Communication by Steam ..... ©00 0 0 Total - £36,49? 7 3