A—No. 8

No 1. copy op a DESPATCH fbom governor sir george gkey to his geace the duke op NEWCASTLE. Auckland, Bth April, 1862. My Lord Duke, — I have the honor to transmit to Your Grace a Petition which has been addressed to Her Majesty by the Provincial Council ot the Province of Auckland, praying for a separate Government for this Province. 2. At the same time I have the honor to enclose a Memorandum by my Responsible Advisers, in relation to this Petition, I have, &c, G. Gket. His Grace the Duke of Newcastle, &c, &c, &c.

No. 36.

Enclosure No. I.— Petition. Enclosure No. 2.—Memorandum, W. Fox, 7th April, 1862.

Enclosure 1 in No. 1. to the queen's most excellent majesty. May it Please Your Majesty,— We, Your .Majesty's faithful and dutiful subjects, the Members of the Provincial Council of Auckland, elected under and by authority of an Act passed in the fifteenth and sixteenth years of Your Majesty's reign, desire to approach Your .Majesty with the expression of our unfeigned attachment to Your Majesty's person and Government. 2. The Provincial Council of the Province of Auckland, having approached the Throne by Petition on three previous Sessions of the Council, namely, in the years 1853, 1855, and 1858, without having obtained the prayer of their Petition, feel constrained again to lay their grievances at the feet of Your Majesty. 3. Your Majesty's Petitioners will not on this occasion recapitulate the various topics adverted to in their former Petitions ; they will merely submit to Your Majesty's gracious consideration the fact that the lapse of time has only added further proofs to those already adduced, of the unfitness of the present Constitution to procure the objects ol good Government, of the necessary tendency of two or more concurrent Legislatures in one country to produce confusion, and to defeat rather than promote the objects for which Government is established. 4. Your Majesty's Petitioners, however, think it right to advert to the fact that the illegal expenditure and general mal-administraticn of the Superintendent of the Province of Auckland, unchecked and uncontrolled by the General Government, has been such as to deprive the Provincial Council of the Province of the powers vested in them by the Constitution Act, which are most necessary for the conservation of the public interests, or to render those powers nugatory. 5. That in praying that the Colonists of Auckland should have their own Government, exempt from the interference of other Colonists, having interests separate from, or conflicting with theirs, Your Majesty's Petitioners only claim what other British Colonists in free settlements have been considered to be entitled to, and have always enjoyed, even when they consisted of communities much smaller than that of Auckland. 6. That the present Constitution was declared by Lord John Russell to be only an experiment granted to the Colonists in compliance with their wishes, and that there was no interest in the Government or Parliament of England to prevent its being altered if it should disappoint their expectations. That, so far from the present Constitution being the choice of the people of Auckland, they had no

PAPERS RELATIVE TO THE FORMATION OF THE PROVINCE OF AUCKLAND INTO A SEPARATE GOVERNMENT.