SEPARATION.

Southland Times, Volume III, Issue 22, 28 December 1863, Page 5 (Supplement)

SEPARATION.

' (Prom the New; Zealander) The time has come, as we predicted it would, when we should be brought face to face with the matter of Separation. This great question has, more or less, during the whole session of the Assembly, been underlying the consideration of every important measure brought before the country. Motives of delicacy on the part of those Otago membere who are the warm advocates of this scheme — a delicacy which reflecis most honorably upon them — rennered them averse to an open advocacy of its claims in the present weakened and | crippled condition of the Northern Island. Thus, the consideration of this question— for that of the removal of the Seat of Government is in reality but another form of the main one of Separation — might have remained in abeyance until a more titti ig time, but for the very feeling whi ;h | actuated ihe Wellington men, who hesii tated not to use the necessity of Auckland as their opportunity, and »vho, in the innate selfishness of the little Pedlington which they so fittingly represent, have furnished another illustration of the word< of the Poet, that " fools rush in where angels fear to tread." * * * * The cause which has Jed to the entertainment of a proposition affecting the removel of the Seat of Government has been the necessity which existed for giving to the Middle Island a larger share than it has heretofore enjoyed of the administrative attention of the Government, and we have only to reverse oui- position with Otii»o, ;in<l to imagine ourselves governed fiom Dun^din, to understand the loss and inconvenience which has resulted to that Province from such ma (-administration of affairs. Bur. in acknowledging this unfair po>;i.ion in which Otago and Canterbury are placed, ar.d in endeavouring to afford some measure or telief, — we use the term, "some measure," advisedly, because we believe the remedy proposed would be but a very partialy one v "indeed — it should at least have been attempted to be done in su'eh-a way as not to have inflicted upon an equally important portion of the colony a;i extent of injury exactly proportionate with the relief afforded to that portion which now feels itself aggrieved. Nay ;we go farther, and do no I hesitate to assert, that, in the removal of the Seat of Government lo Cook's Straits, a very great injury would be inflicted on the vast Province of Auckland, and upon the lesser ones of Taranaki and Hawke's Bay, while but a very inadequate measure of relief, if any, would be afforded to Canterbury, and a still smaller one to Southland and Ota^o, the latter the real centre of wealth and population in the iV3iddie Island. To retain Auckland, as the capital of both Islands, would be unjust to Canterbury and O. ( ngo. To remove it to Dunedin or Christchurch would be a3 unjust to the equally important Provinces of the Northern Island : and to carry out the re^ solution of the Cook's Strait's clique would be to do a palpable injury to the whole colony. There remains, then, but the aliernative of Separation, Ihe apportionment of New Zealand into its own natural divisions, with a separate or independent Government of cither island.