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New Zealand Mail, Issue 1404, 26 January 1899, Page 33

Considerable surprise was occasioned by : the cabled announcement that Sir Horace Tozer, Agent-General of Queensland, in seconding, at a meeting of the Anti-Sugar Bounty League, in London, a resolution expressing disappointment at the failure of t’ e Brussels Conference to secure the abolition of the sugar bounties, took advantage of the opportunity to say that “the inaction of the British Government had created an unpleasant impression and had augmented the separatist element in Queensland.” This statement would lead people to believe that separation from the Old Country is a “live question” in Queensland. The Brisbane “ Courier ” clearly indicates the contrary in the following emphatic remarks: —“ When the AgentGeneral talks of a separatist feeling in Queensland we simply laugh. He cannot be referring to local separation, because North, Centre and South are equally concerned in the abolition of an iniquitous bounty system, and any other variety is conspicuous by its absence. The Tozer imagination has got on top at an/ awkward juncture—that is about the explanation. Sir Horace has misrepresented the colony and done himse j no We want no such slips made at the world’s centre; and the Government would do well to advise him that actual facts and not figments of his imagination should be used by our Agent-General when he addresses meetings in future.”