NELSON JOTTINGS.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 507, 22 May 1869, Page 2

NELSON JOTTINGS.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) The Superintendent of the Province is engaged in a somewhat awkward pig hunt. He must feel that his prize is likely to escape. If he succeed in overthrowing the Separation petition in the General Assembly, the West Coast electors will oust him from his Superintendcutship ; and if the prayer of the petition be granted, his province then will scarcely be worth presiding over, or the revenue be sufficient to warrant the maintenance of a Provincial Executive or Council. Which course has he to adopt? Doubtless he has weighed the matter in both scales. He finds it most difficult now to attempt any compromise with the West Coast, and must oppose their views rather than forfeit the confidence of the Nelson electors, a few of whom may yet be heard to uphold his entire policy. The West Coast is not yet numerically powerful enough to attempt of itself to ring the bell of the October target, but it certainly has the power of providing the Curtis gun with a blank cartridge on the occasion. Nelson rumor has it that Mr N. Edwards will oppose Mr Curtis in October, and doubts are entertained whether Mr Barnicoat will not come forward, though neither of these geutlemen have as yet openly declared their intentions upon the matter. Though the West Coast may at present be primed with anti-Curtis views, it has yet to be shown what greater claims either of the two gentlemen named would have upon that portion of the Province, or whether that portion could expect to meet from them a more liberal consideration.

The Estimates for the current year give a sop to the West Coast, in the shape of ,£5050 for Buller Valley roads, £9350 for Grey ditto, £2OOO for

branch roads to new diggings and contingencies, &c. But how much of these amounts is likely to be expended ? The difficulty lies not so much in having sums placed on the Estimates, as in getting such amounts spent in the districts after they are voted. The constructions placed upou the words '• vote " and " expend " by the Nelson Executive are entirely distinct and different. The former word is allowed a place in their West Coast vocabulary ■ the latter is there marked extinct, or not now in use.

The voting on the several paragraphs in the Reply to His Honor's Address has tickled some of the Nelson folks, and it is much to be regretted that thev should have planned t!.ie Donne quietus scheme by having placed one of thp West Coast members in the chair during the debate, which caused the result to be a loss of the Separation question by one vote. As it is, the result speaks favourably for the object sought, but, had the West Coast party managed to have numbered another vote, it would have been a great feather in the cap of the Separationists. The Nelson papers are accusing the other members who voted with the Wes; Coast party, of inconsistency, and have given not less than three or four leading articles upon the subject. How one of the members for the city (Dr Irvine) should have voted with the West Coast, in disapproving of the determination of His Honor to oppose in the General Assembly any dismemberment of the Province, is as great a mystery to the West Coast members as to the Nelson press or public. But I such is the recorded fact. Either he and the others must consider that the southern portion of the Province is a burden to Nelson, and its absence would be a desirable riddance, or they must sympathise with the inhabitants of the Coast in their grounds of complaint and in their wish to be separated.