7

A.—3

alleviation of the difficulties of New Zealand may probably be reached through a division of the colony. I have been desirous to give you the earliest intimation that such suggestions as these are under the consideration of the Government, even before I am able to define to you with any degree of precision the probability of their entire or partial adoption. If the Government should ask only for enabling powers, what they do in that, case will simply place them in a condition to act with greater despatch upon any information and recommendations which they may receive from you, than if they were obliged to wait ihe approach of a new session of Parliament. If they should obtain enactments of a positive description, it will not be without a sense of the inconvenience which attends such a mode of proceeding, or any "mode other than that of acting in systematic and uniform correspondence with the chief executive officer of the colony concerned. But they can only decide upon the question after a mature consideration of the urgency of the reasons which press upon them for making an attempt to revive the movement of colonization towards New Zealand from hence, and with the best judgment they can form as to the probable state of the colony at the time when the result of their measures may become known there, and as to the probable course of your own exertions and of your measures in the intervals. It is not in the least degree likely, I may venture to assure you, that they should adopt any decision here which could have the effect of fettering your discretion, or of obstructing your proceedings with respect to the affairs of the Northern Island in general. If they shall determine, as it is possible they may, to act decisively, and yet not as the result of previous correspondence with you, it will, I am convinced, be simply in the way of circumscribing the local range of your exertions by the erection of portions of New Zealand into a separate colony. They will, in that case, be careful to determine the limits of those separated portions in such a manner as to obviate the risk of inconvenient interference with your plans for the adjustment of the relations between the settlers and aborigines. They will not include in the portion removed from your present government any district except it be some one with regard to which they may feel justified in the belief that no such inconvenience can be caused by its removal. The Middle Island will, as you may readily anticipate, form the principal part of the new colony if it should be erected. No addition will be made to it from the Northern Island unless with respect to tracts occupied by the Company's settlers, and then within such limits and under such conditions as they may conceive to be perfectly secure with reference to the dangers to which I have adverted. In thus endeavouring to indicate to you the general outline of a course dependent on many contingencies, my object has been to give you the earliest information on the subject which may have important, though, I trust, not embarrassing relations to your own proceedings. Before the end of the month of June it will, I think, be absolutely requisite that the Government should have arrived at its decision ; and, therefore, I have the hope that the partial uncertainty in which this despatch may leave you may, at all events, be of short duration. I have, &c, Lieutenant-Governor Grey, &c. W. E. Gladstone.

No. 6. Copt of a Despatch from the Eight Hon. Earl Gbey to Governor Geet. (No. 23.) Sie, — Downing Street, 23rd December, 1846. You will have been apprised, long before your receipt of this despatch, that in the last session of Parliament the Act which I now enclose was passed for the better government of New Zealand. The motives which suggested such an enactment are best explained by a general reference to the correspondence between yourself and preceding Governors of the colony on the one hand, and myself and my predecessors in office on the other. Any more specific retrospect would, for my immediate purpose, be superfluous. It is enough to say that the necessity of a fundamental change in the system adopted by the Charter of November, 1840, has been insisted on by all parties to the discussion, and that there is an almost equally unanimous concurrence among them in the opinion that the change should be in the direction of calling the settlers to participate much more largely in the business of legislation and local self-government. The accompanying Act is accordingly framed on that principle. Tor the institutions established under the Charter of November, 1840, it contemplates the substitution of Municipal Corporations for the government of each separate district of New Zealand which is or which shall be settled by colonists of European birth and origin. Every such district is to be erected into a borough; every such borough is to elect a Common, Council, from which are to be chosen a Mayor and a Court of Aldermen ; every such Common Council is to elect members to serve in a House of Eepresentatives, forming one of the three Estates of a Provincial Assembly. For this purpose the whole of New Zealand is to be divided into two or more provinces. In every such Provincial Assembly laws will be made for the province by the House of Eepresentatives, by a Legislative Council, aud by the Governor, who together will constitute the Provincial Legislature. But as there are many topics of general concern to all the inhabitants of New Zealand, respecting which some uniformity of legislation and of administration will be indispensable, it is further provided that a General Assembly of the New Zealand Islands shall be holden by the Governor-in-Chief. That General Assembly will be composed of himself, of a Legislative Council, and of a House of Eepresentatives. But no one will be a member of the Legislative Council of the General Assembly who is not also a member of one of the Legislative Councils of the Provincial Assemblies; neither will any one be a member of the House of Representatives of the General Assembly who is not a member of one of the Houses of Representatives of the Provincial Assemblies. In order to adapt the system of the local Executive Government to this scheme of provincial and general legislation, the Charter (if the mere text of that instrument be alone regarded) provides for and supposes the creation of five different offices: they are a Governor-in-Chief of New Zealand, a Governor of each province, and a Lieutenant-Governor of each. But the actual appointment of five such distinct officers forms no part