The Westport Times. SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1869.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 453, 16 January 1869, Page 2

The Westport Times. SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1869.

It was our intention to have occupied s:)ine space in our present number with an article on the question of the separation of the district from Nelson Province, with letters which we have received on the same subject, and with quotations from well-written articles which have appeared in our Charles, tun contemporary. The pre-occupa-tion of our space renders it necessarv to hold these over, and for the same reason we must withhold for a day much of the report of yesterday's meeting of the Progress Committee. Members of the Committee very naturally and justly expressed the wish that the views which they hold on the question would receive the advocacy of the local Press. It may be sufficient for us to say at present that it is from no lack of sympathy with the Committee, or from any neglect of the subject, that the local Press has not been more < utspoken and eager in its advocacy of the views which they have taken. AVe confess, however, to have had very different sympathies, and to have had a strong desire to see Provincial institutions maintained. The opinion may be eccentric, but it nevertheless was our opiniou that the Provincial system was a well devised system for the promotion of the settlement of the colony, and for the promotion of its "eneral interests. We have ventured to believe that the New Provinces Act by which Marlborough, Southland, and other districts were brought into separate existence was nothing short of a colonial calamity, and to believe further that, in many instances, the public outcry for the establishment of counties would be equally calamitous, and subversive of the*'.very objects for which tbeylwere sought. "We were not without tshe knowledge also that, in -some districts, the county question

was merely a subject of newspaper agitation, unsupported by the general voice of the people, and that its constant discussion was not only tiresome, but irritating to Governments, and hurtful to the very districts which it assumed to benefit. With this belief and knowledge, we have been indisposed to lead opinion in the same direction, and in the present instance have preferred rather to follow than to endeavor to lead public feeling. If it is not always, it should be a maxim with public writers to preserve, at least, -some degree of consistency. To continue, however, opinionative and adhesive to a theory in the face of facts would be as inconsistent with the interests of the public, and it must be confessed that the facts here are in favor of a dissolution with the kelson Province being sought and advocated. Dissimilarity of interests, absolute absence of attention to district interest*, inadequate representation, and many more matters which it is unnecessary to detail, render it most desirable, or absolutely necessary, that the inhabitants of this district should, politically and financially, be in a different position from that which they now occupy ; and as there seems to be no alternative but that which the Progress Committee have advocated, it is an alternative which, however late or unwillingly, we must also adopt and advocate. Once adopted as an object to be advocated we venture to think that the Committee will have no cause to complain of a lack of moral support from the Press.