COUNTY SEPARATION.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 483, 27 March 1869, Page 2

COUNTY SEPARATION.

(From the Orey Biver Argus.) We congratulate our Westport friends on the inauguration of this movement, but there are many matters involved which deeply interest this district, and which require consideration. First of all it will be the duty of the Committee so appointed to test the public feeling on this subject in Charleston, Brighton, Cobden, and the Nelson side of the Grey Valley. The two former towns may, naturally enough, declare in favor of the creation of a new County, einhracing the whole of the Nelson South West Gold Fields, but the feeling may be different in this district. No portion of these Gold Fields has more cause to complain of systematic neglect, and the absorption of its revenues, to be spent elsewhere, then the Grey district has. Since the Government head-quarters were removed from Cobden to Westport this district has been literally robbed of the revenues which ought to have gone towards its improvement and development, and expended elsewhere. There is no question that so long as Cobden was the head-quarters of the Government, the Valley of the Grey received special attention, and the wants of the miners so speedily attended to, that a feeling of gratitude and respect for the Nelson Government was engendered in the public mind, which it will take a long period of neglect to eradicate. But that period has now nearly expired, and the residents in the district have been compelled, perhaps reluctantly, to depart from their first love. Along period of neglect has at last opened their eyes to the necessity for securing some other form of Government than that under which they are present suffering, rather than living, and it is just possible that they may elect to join with their Westport friends in the movement for securing the establishment of a new County, included within the present boundaries. But we feel sure that on this point public opinion in the district will be much divided between the proposition and that of establishing a new County from the Teremakau to Eazorback, inincluding under one Government the whole valley of the Grey, with Greymouth for its centre. A more compact little county could not be created in the Colony. "We know that on the Nelson side there is a feeling against adopting this latter alternative, and that is the reason why we hail the movement which has been inaugurated at Westport, and call upon the committee as speedily as possible to test public opinion on the issue which they have placed before the residents, in order that a definite result may be arrived at. For ourselves, it is well known that our leanings are towards either the establishment of a separate County for Grey Valley; or the extension of the County of Westland as far north as Razorback, and we rely confidently that one of these alternatives will sooner be accepted by the residents in the Grey District than they will consent to continue to be governed and neglected from Westport.