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Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1826, 22 December 1875, Page 2

Tin! feeling of ,the thinking and sensible portion of our people in relation'to the questions of Separationjand the Land Eerenne is frequently and wilfully misrepresented. The

candidate for City East, on Monday night, seemed to imply that there was no very strong feeling in favour of Separation, and that the cry was only a mean ruse to an end. This is the jargon of the bad lot that Mr. Clark has unhappily fallen among, and he will find, to his regret, that the irrepressible desire among the people to separate and manage our own affairs is the rock on which his political fortune is wrecked. And the Government organ yesterday morning, taking up the cue, endeavours to mistify the subject by words without knowledge. Accustomed to the ways that are dark and the tricks that are vain among a political regime that has had more corruption laid to its charge than any other administration ever known in the colony, the Government organ professes also to believe that the Sepaiatibn cry is a " pretext;" and with the object of showing thia nffects to see an incompatibility in the agitation for Separation and the agitation for a share in the land fund. Our contemporary, either from stupidity or cunning, assumes that the cry of the Opposition is for both these at once. Whereas, if he does not know it is his own fault that these two are simply alternatives. If a "common purse" had been within the compass of the Abolition Act, there would have been less feeling in the cry for Separation. But if there is any honesty in the Abolition proposals, and we are not to build on the utter prostitution of political faith, and give the lie to all the assertions and efforts of the Government, the localization of the land fund and a series of purses for all the separate " Districts" of the colony, are the settled objects of the scheme of Abolition. That we shall have at no price. As alternative to this, we demand that we be no longer unequally yoked together. That there be an equitable adjustment of our assets and liabilities, and we part in friendship. Let the South keep its land fund, and our best blessing go with it. But we expect,—and the South will be only too happy to agree to not mere justice but generosity—that in consideration^ ourPsurrendering for ever all claim to the land, our share in the public burthens shall be a minimum. This is what we mean in Separation ; and right well the Government hacks know it. Alliance with our fat neighbour has been making us thinner and thinner every day. Let us take our share of the goods, dissolve connection, shake off interference, and paddle our own canoe. That is what our people want, and, if we cannot have an equal partnership in land and all, with the help of Heaven, that is what wo'll have.