TIMARU SEPARATION MOVEMENT.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XVI, Issue 912, 7 August 1861, Page 3

TIMARU SEPARATION MOVEMENT.

To ihe Editor of the Lyttelton Times.

Sib,—ln your able article of the 27th on the Movement at Timaru, I observe yoa have not thought it necessary to remind the good oiks of that district of a fact which they doubtless know, but which seems to me of sufficient importance to be worth repetition, namely, that if they ask for a new province, the settlement of its boundaries will rest with the ministry at Auckland and not with themselves.

The experience of Southland, which you have already quoted, furnishes a case in point. The Southlanders asked and expected to get for their boundary the hills forming the watershed of the Mataura river—a natural boundary, including only the settlers and squatters whose outlet always had been Invercargill. The ministry, whose object it was apparently to create small and weaknew provinces, and not self sustaining large ones, confined the Southlanders to the right bank of the Mataura, thus excluding many who had signed the petition' and among others Dr. Menzies himself—the prime agitator in the movement, whose ran happened to be on the left bank of that river, and. who still pays rent to Otago. It seems singular that this movement lias not been preceded by an attempt to redress grievances, if any exist, in a less violent way. How is it the Timaru people have till now been silent? How is it^ they have not raised their voices in common with Kaiapoi, Akaroa, and Lyttelton, who believe that they too have reasonable ground for complaint. Would not a coalition of these " outlying " places, as they are learning to think them in Christchurch', be more to the purpose than the proposed separation ? I suggest the above points for consideration, arid not, I hope, needlessly, as your contemporary the 'Press' has thought proper to hold out rather temptingly on one or two occasions the prospect of " loosing all the country south of the Rangitata." At this end of the province no one, of course, pays any attention to the rabid effusions of that monomaniacal paper, but it is possible distance may have lent its proverbial enchantment to the view of the Timaru petitioners. If so—if they have attached any weight to the denunciations and luguburious prophecies of universal ruin with which the columns of the 'Press' used to teem—let me invite them to read its tenth number and they will see therein that the ' Press' now declares it has never meant anything it has hitherto said. They will see that paper has no longer any fears for Canterbury. AH its keen sensibilities and overflowing sympathies are reserved for the poor contractors, whom the new diggings may cause to pay higher for labor than they anticipated. In other words, the * Press ' ignores Australia in general and Melbourne in particular. The contractors probably will not.

Our Timaru friends need not then fear the responsibilities as to the railway, which they will share with the rest of the province; and when they are in a position to claim, by population and production, the improvement of their port, the rest of the province will not fear to return the obligation. I am sir, your obedient servant, " UNION.