THE SEPARATION PETITION.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 500, 6 May 1869, Page 3

THE SEPARATION PETITION.

(From the Nelson Colonist.) Criticism might be applied to the somewhat undignified, not to say injudicious, nature of the attack of the Superintendent on the West Coast petition for separation. To descend to the minute details of misrepresentation and misquotation which it is said marks the petition, might be very well for a newspaper article, or for a representative of the Superintendent and Executive in Council; but in an opening speech it was small and undignified. If such little personal matters could not be entrusted to the members of the Executive, what are those members in the Council for ? Had such, almost scolding, defence of himself been attempted at one of those astonishing conceptions,—the annual public meetings his Honor (laboring under some grotesque nightmare as to what constitutionalism meant) promised to hold, but never yet has held, — it might have been in somewhat better taste. As it was, it should have been left to the representatives of the Government in the Council, and not have been paraded as the backbone of the opening speech. (From the Examiner.')

The reference made by the Superintendent to the West Coast memorial for separation will be anything but palatable to the authors of that movement. On giving the memorial a cursory glance we detected several mis-statements which we considered might have been the result of ignorance, but we were not prepared for the palpable mis-statements and misrepresentations spoken of by the Superintendent, and which, like "all attempts of the kind, must injure the cause they were intended to serve.