(Hear, hear, and cheers.) I admit at once, gentle men, that whenever I am called upon by any constituency to address them upon the public affairs of the colony, it is my duty to do so, and I do so with all the more pleasure be cause I am never unwilling to meet face to face the people of the country in which I live; and I do so still with all the more pleasure on this occasion, because I am, with two or three exceptions, the oldest Canter bury man iu this Assembly ; that is to say, 1 am, perhaps, with two or three exceptions in this room, the person who has bad the longest connection, alike in a private and offi cial character, with the province of Canter bury, having been engaged, to a very small extent it may be, but to me a very in teresting extent, in the foundation of the colony 21 years ago. (Cheers.) I was pre sent here taking part in the foundation of this now noble, flourishing province 21 years ago in company with Captain Thomas, who was sent out in connection with the founda tion of this settlement, and it is with un feigned satisfaction and the greatest possible pleasure that, standing where I then stood, looking down on a plain inhabited only by five Europeans whose names I could mention, I now see a fine and flourishing country, a magnificent harvest, flocks and herds, and all the marks of a great and growing prosperity. (Cheers.) The part I had in laying the foundation of your province was, I admit, extremely small, but to me it was most inter esting. I did, as it were, but touch with my little finger the work that was going on, but it was, and to me always will be one of the proudest and most pleasing memories of my life, that 1 had something to do with the foundation of this and the adjacent province of Otago, and that at the end of 21 years, I return and see them flourishing in a manner that is almost unprecedented in the history of the British Empire, since we begun that great and in teresting work of colonisation. 