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

The following, on the same subject, appears in the West Coast Times of Oct. 17:— The question of the separation of the North and the Middle Islands is still one of the topics of public agitation ever cropping up. The Native war, and the responsibility for its management and cost; the apportionment of the colonial debt; and the application of the new system of local government with restricted powers have developed features which show the almost impracticability and the certain difficulty of the present political settlement of the colony continuing. We are in a position, as we have before had occasion to say, very different from that of an old consolidated society, to the management of whose local affairs a uniform law could be applied, and tho attention of whose Parliament, therefore, could be concentrated on the administration of a national policy. There are not two provinces in the colony that have interests in all respects in common, and it is on this ground that we have always advocated the enlargement of the legislative powers of the various Provincial Councils. So far as the general fiscal system of the colony is concerned ; so far as relates to its criminal and its commercial and maritime law ; so far as regards all that may be called a national policy, the Central Legislature should be predominant. But the necessities of the outlying districts of the colony clearly point to the expediency of conferring upon local representative bodies large powers of dealing with local interests and the administration of local revenues. A large portion of the revenue raised in this district is absorbed in the cost of the maintenance of the Native War. We say the maintenance of the war, because all the "policies" that have hitherto been pursued have seemrd to rival each other in the attempt to keep the costly game alive. Repressive or conciliatory, or by whatever name it may be described, the course pursued by each Governor, or each Government, has had no effect but either to excitethe Maoris to active hostilities or to feed their slumbering resentment. Missionaries preach to t em, and become their advocates, and their ambassadors to Government, and they are murdered in return ! Seats in Parliament are given to their chief men, and their response to this measure of conciliation is a repetition of the atrocities which have from the beginning characterised this most unnatural and barbarous war. The enormous expense of this war, and the withdrawal of capital it has occasioned from the peaceful pursuits of industry, are not the only calamities it has inflicted upon the colony. It has squandered our resources and crippled ourenergies. But it has done more than this. It has diverted from our shores the great stream of immigration, which is the life-blood of every young colony ; and it has lessened the value of the securities we offer for the great public works, which are quite us necessary to our industrial development as are the sinews of the labourer.