  The axial gauge is applied to the analysis of Euclidean quantum gravity on
manifolds with boundary. A set of boundary conditions which are completely
invariant under infinitesimal diffeomorphisms require that spatial components
of metric perturbations should vanish at the boundary, jointly with all
components of the ghost one-form and of the gauge-averaging functional. If the
latter is taken to be of the axial type, all components of metric perturbations
obey Dirichlet conditions, and all ghost modes are forced to vanish
identically. The one-loop divergence coincides with the contribution resulting
from three-dimensional transverse-traceless perturbations.
