SEPARATION FROM NELSON.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 492, 17 April 1869, Page 2

SEPARATION FROM NELSON.

(_From the Nelson Examiner.)

The petition from the Nelson Southwest Gold-fields for separation is now, we believe, complete, and although we have not seen the document, it abounds with statements, we are informed, which are very wide of the truth. Thus, the revenue said to have been drawn from the district by the Nelson Government, during the last year, is very much in excess of what was raised in the whole of the province. This is of a piece with a statement made by a speaker at a recent separation meeting, held at Charleston, who said that during the last month Charleston alone had contributed about £IO,OOO to the provincial revenue—at which rate the whole revenue would be furnished by Charleston, and the contributions from other districts be nil.

(From the Nelson Mail.) A copy of the petition to be presented to the General Assembly at its next session, from the inhabitants of the West Coast of the Nelson Propince has been received in town, and we have had the privilege of perusing this interesting document. In doing so we came across certain assertions which possess all the charms of novelty, and a little of the raciness of judicious exaggeration. The way in which the frainers have committed themselves to figures betrays, we fear, a lamentable want of discretion on their part, as there will be but little difficulty in discovering glaring errors in some of their mathematical calculations. "We shall take an opportunity of referring to this matter again when we have been able to compare the statements made in the petition with the hard dry facts that are to be found in the blue books.

(From the Hokitika Star.)

Discord has at this early period of the campaign appeared in the records of the separators. Some are going in for the erection of a separate county with Westport for its capital, some for amalgamating with the Grey district and forming a county out of part of Westport and a portion of Nelson province, with Greymouth as its chief town, some don't exactly know what they want, and the residents of the Upper Grey, while fully appreciating the advantages of local self-govern-ment, seem to think that they would lose rather than gain, by being formed a portion of a county to be reigned over by either Westport or Greymouth. How the various contending interests of the large territory known as the Nelson Goldfields are to be reconciled is hard to tell. One thing, however, is certain, and that is that the journals of the two towns which are striving to be the metropolis of the proposed new county are preparing for a paper war of the bitterest and inkiest description.[?]