Enclosure.

The Law Officers to the Duke of Newcastle.

Sir Frederic Rogers was also pleased to annex the case which was received from the colony, and the papers which accompanied it.

The Standing Orders quoted in the case were passed under authority of the 52nd clause of the New Zealand Government Act 15 and 16 Vict., cap. 72.

Sir Frederic Rogers was further pleased to state that we would not fail to observe that the case was drawn on the part of the Legislative Council, and that the House of Representatives was not a party to the reference; but we would find among the papers a Ministerial memorandum in an opposite sense, from which it might be inferred that the question was fairly stated.

In obedience to your Grace's commands, we have taken this matter into consideration, and have the honour to report,—

That we are of opinion that, if, in a Bill introduced in the House of Representatives, and passed through that House, a certain tax or duty has been imposed upon a Crown grant, or an instrument in the nature of a Crown grant, it is competent to the Legislative Council, without any breach of the privileges of the House of Representatives, to make the efficacy for any given purpose of another class of instruments intended to affect Native lands under the provisions of the same Bill dependent upon their assuming the form of Crown grants or of those instruments in the nature of Crown grants on which the tax or duty has been so imposed by the House of Representatives.

It is, we think, a fallacy to represent this as a case in which the Legislative Council takes upon itself to impose any tax or duty. It merely provides that a particular kind of instrument shall be necessary to produce a particular effect. It has a right to decide for itself upon the form and character of the instrument which shall be sufficient for that purpose, and it cannot be deprived of that right merely because the form of instrument which it prefers is one on which a duty may have been already imposed by law, or will be imposed if the Bill should pass—the imposition of the duty on that form of instrument being the act, not of the Legislative Council, but of the House of Representatives.

We do not agree with the argument that the 2s. 6d. per acre was not in its nature a tax or duty. But the other argument urged on the part of the Legislative Council, that the House of Representatives cannot, by imposing a tax or duty on a particular kind of legal instrument, exclude the Legislative Council from the power of originating or amending Bills relating to such instruments, seems page 41 to us to be well founded; and we see no answer to the suggestion that the privilege contended for by the House of Representatives would, in effect, be the same as if, a stamp duty "being imposed upon deeds in England, the House of Peers were thereby precluded from considering whether certain transactions should or should not be effected by deed."It has never been supposed in England that the privilege of the House of Commons as to originating taxation is attended with such consequences as this.