sideration. We cwn assnre your Excellency, with the utmost sincerity, of our anxious desire in all things to mark our high respect for your person and office ; at the same time, charged as we are with high constitutional privileges, involving corresponding duties, we dare not hesitate to pray your Excellency, at this serious crisis of affairs, to have recourse to the advice of your Executive Councillors, who, by Her Majesty's Instructions, and the Rules of the Constitution, are appointed as your Excellency's advisjrs in all matters of importance councillors who are sworn to advise your Excellency rightly, and who will be responsible to Her Majesty, to your Excellency, to this House, and to the Colony, for the advice they may give. Without presuming to question your Excellency's undoubted right to exercise, under ordinary contingencies, a free and unbiassed judgment upon matters of Government policy, we, nevertheless, cannot butregard the subject of your Excellency's Message, involving, as it does, the relations between the Executive and the Legislature, and affecting the whole state of political affairs at the present moment, as matters of such importance as to be unfit to be confided to an unofficial and irresponsible adviser, but rather as demanding recourse, on your Excellency's part, to your Excellency's sworn constitutional advisers. In the meantime we respectfully assure your Excellency that we will, at the earliest moment, proceed to consider the subjects referred to in your Excellency'* Message, with an anxious desire to co-operate with your Excellency by all constitutional means, in averting the difficulties and dangers at present impending over the Colony.—(Read.) Motion made and question put—That the Address as read be adopted.—(Dr. Monro.) Amendment proposed—That the whole of the words of the address be omitted, and the following words substituted; — " That in the opinion of this Committee, according to the usages of the British Constitution, than which none are more firmly established or better understood, every act of the Crown, with a single exception, must be performed by and with the advice of Cabinet Ministers, being sworn members of the Privy Council, aad that the one only exception to the rule, is the absolutely free and independent discretion of the Sovereign alone, in doing whatever pertains to tha choice and appointment of Cabinet Ministers."— (Mr. E. G. Wakefield.) Question put—That the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the queition. Committee divided. Ayes, 23. Noes, 10. Messrs. King Messrs. E. G. Wakefield Brown Forsaith Kelham Travers Featherston O'Neill Monro Cargill Revans Macandrew Taylor Mackay Weld Greenwood Fitzgerald Lee Cutten E< j, Wakefield (Teller) Bacot Gray O'Brien Picajd Ludlam Moor house Crom pton Rhodes Sewell Hart Carletoa Gledhill Wortley (Teller)