The Westport Times. THURSDAY, JANUARY 21, 1869.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 455, 21 January 1869, Page 2

The Westport Times. THURSDAY, JANUARY 21, 1869.

It was the argument of the Chairman of the Progress Committee, in his recent remarks on the subject of Separation, that it was not necessary there should be a positive or palpable cause of complaint against the Nelson Government to justify us in demanding greater facilities for local self-government. He thought it enough if we could .*-how that, in this district, we could better govern ourselves through the medium of a County Council than, in the very nature of thiugs, it is possible to do under provincial institutions as they are at present administered. But while taking this moderate view of the case, and while willing to act upon the benevolent maxim of giving even " the devil his due," he averred that there was no difficulty in the way of discovering grievances, if it was our disposition to do so. lie referred especially to the disproportionately small and manifestly unfair amount of representation which the district receives in the Nelson Council, compared with the ratio of representation accorded to the other parts of the Province. He considered that that, of itself, was a sufficient and serious grievance, and it is certainly all the grievance that he described it to be. It is, indeed, more of a grievance than was illustrated by the figures quoted by the Chairman, and it is a grievance of such magnitude as to warrant, altogether apart from the question of Separation, the very strongest expressions of complaint, a«d more eager and urgent action than it has at any time previously provoked. In connection with the question of Separation, it is a grievance which should form the ground-work of any petition that may be prepared, and which cannot fail to present itself to the mind of anyone as going very far to justify the change which is now being sought. The actual number of members of the Nelson Provincial Couucil we find to be twenty-six. Of that number five only are returned by the population oi the West Coast! Compared even with the numbers of the population, a more disproportionate division of representation can scarcely be conceived. The whole population of the Province is some 23,000, and these figures include the numbers " on board shipping," and in " other parts" than Westland North or the district immediately surrounding Nelson —the "other parts " meaning probably, the portion of the Province which, on the east coast, intervenes between the provinces of Marlborough and Canterbury. The population of Westland North is, of itself, upwards of 10,000, and the strong probability is that these figures are rather below than above the mark, for it is almost a necessity of the circumstances that the census should only be insufficiently taken on the West Coast, compared with districts of a different character. But, taking the figures as they stand, what do we find ? That while 13,000 of a population have twenty-one members to represent them

and their interests, the remaining 10,000 have only five representatives. The town, courteously and colonially called the city, of Nelson, has itself six members, and, consequently, one vote more than the whole of the extensive district of Westland North, with double its population, and, we dare to say, ten times its practical resources and vested iuterests. This, too, is exclusive of a member for a suburban district, and no fewer than eight members for the Waimeas East, West, and North ; and how suburban these districts are in their character, we leave those acquainted with the geography of the country to judge. Add to that the influence of a Superintendent, and the presence of an Executive, elected solely by Nelson and " its suburbs," and the sum total of purely Nelson representation, as against that of Westland North, is very easily computed. It is not to be wondered at that the Chairman of the Progress Committee should characterise our members as under such conditions "altogether useless." Unexplained, the reference might be ambiguous, and a questionable compliment to those who have the fortune or misfortune to be elected as members for the district, but, with this explanation of their true position as a minority, their inutility, and the consequent apathy which prevails as to the honors of the office, are perfectly comprehensible. Nothing but a fortuitous and certainly unparallelled concentration of talent in the persons of five men returned from this district, or the existence of extreme good-nature and almost angelic virtues on the part of the Nelson majority, can be productive of an equitable division of the Council's attention to the country, and of a fair apportionment in the expenditure of public moneys. Is talent of such an order to be found in Westland North, or do virtues so ethereal predominate so exteusively in Neleon, that the representation of this district can without risk be retained on its present basis? However willing we may be to welcome even the first harbingers of the promised millennium, we fear that the time has not yet come for us to be such " trustful and loving subjects " as to believe that individual talent can be so influential, or that such virtue will bo exercised by Provincial Council majorities. We fear much more that Westland North is not appointed to be, even at the advent of the millennium, the particular part of the world where the supremacy of the aristocracy of intellect is first to be asserted, or that even Nelson, though it may now be the garden of New Zealand, is predestinated to be the second garden of Eden, with all the virtues of our first parents multiplied and replenished in the persons of the twentyone members of its Provincial Council.