SEPARATION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 139, 22 October 1868, Page 3

SEPARATION.

— ♦ — (From the Dunedin Evening Star.) At length the people of Canterbury hare come to the conclu ion which the majority in Otago reached long ngo, that separation from the North Island is essential to the prosperity of the Middle Island. Unfortunately they have been slow in arriving at a truth that Jia3 been long self-evident. They nursed the dream of the unity of tho colony until the affairs of the two islands have become so interwoven as to render separation far more difficult than it would have been a few years ago. Still it is not too late, although the fate of the petition sent to Her Majesty last year is an earnest of the difficulties that will be thrown in the way by the Imperial Government. Mr Stafford still holds to the theory that the unity of the colony is necessary to its prosperity and clings to office, professedly to secure it. The experience of the last three years should have convinced him of the errors on which those grand schemes were based, that according to him were to conduct New Zealand to greatness. But he is not one to profit by experience. If the measures that he adopts do not succeed, he is ready to blame anything rather than acknowledge his

mistakes. True, he has had much to contend wiib. He has been hampered by the follies of previous Ministries, but he and his Ministry have invited many of the difficulties in which they are now involved, and if he is to remain in office, it is time that he reviewed his policy in order to discover wherein his blunders originated. Mr Stafford complains that the speakers at Christc ! mrch did not speak as if they were colonists of New Zealand. His mistake evidently is that there is or should be a national feeling in the Colony such as he Hssumes prevails in Great Britain and the old countries in Europe. It would indeed be strange if such a sentiment had already grown amid the diverse interests of the two islands, and in the face of the injustice with which the Middle Island has invariably been treated, whenever the necessities of the North Island were pressing. What is there in the North Island to justify'the appropriation of the revenues of Canterbury and Otago to the defence of its inhabitant* ? They can make no return for the sacrifice that is demanded. They have never even given thanks for the assistance rendered. They have received it as a matter of course, and whenever it has been .attempted to be withheld they have come forward with complaint and insult. It must have been plain to the least gifted, that in proportion to the expenditure in the North Island the Middle Island was impoverished. Had it not been for Maori wars, and other unproductive expenditure, it is more than probable that in the latter a system of railways would have made great progress; that roads would have been formed, rivers bridged, intern il communication developed, and vast tracts of country opened up for settlement that will not be available for many years to come. But all these aids to peopling the country have been indefinitely postponed. There has not even been an attempt made to localise the expenditure for Native purposes, but without scruple the revenues of the Southern Provinces have been spent on the Northern, and this as a necessary result of the unity of the colony. Mr Stafford and his colleagues should bear in mind that this unity which costs the Middle Island so much, rests only on the fiat of the Home Government. Geographically the two islands are separated, and they are equally distinct in their political, social, and commercial interests. That their affairs hava been complicated by the action of the colonial Government, although an impediment, is no good reason why separation should not take place. There are yet means to an equitable arrangement, and since the unity of the colony rests only on the act of the Imperial Government, the power that ordained it can equally decree division into two. When Otago urged that course, Canterbury was lukewarm. Now that the people there nave awakened to their true interests Otago again slumbers. The necessity for action is greater now than ever before, and no time should be lost in adopting measures for a simultaneous effort throughout the Middle Island to obtain separation.