The Westport Times. SATURDAY, MARCH 13, 1869.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 477, 13 March 1869, Page 2

The Westport Times. SATURDAY, MARCH 13, 1869.

The tenor of the reports which have lately occupied a considerable portion of our space, and especially the report of the public meeting held at the Masonic Hall on Tuesday evening, must have made it apparent to our readers that the question of Separation from Nelson, and of the establishment of the County of Westland North, has been fairly launched. The subject is no longer one occupying only the occasional attention of a body of undefined status like tlie Progress Committee, or ventilated meiely, and with some reluctance, through the medium of the newspaper press. It is a subject upon which, in Westport at least, there has been given an unmistakeable and earnest expression of public opinion. With a heartiness and unanimity which, we must say, we were scarcely prepared for, the people of Westport have declared that a severance from Nelson is a necessity imposed upon this district in the very nature of things, but especially imposed upon it by the systematic care that has latterly been taken by the Nelson Government to assist by artifice a naturally unequal, unjust, and inconvenient political connection. They have, by implication, affirmed also that the system of local government under which they prefer to have the affairs of the district managed is that system which has been lately and, as they believe, successfully initiated the County system as it has been established in Westland South. Of course this declaration and affirmation by no means go the length of settling the question. There are other portions of the district the inhabitants of which have yet publicly to express the opinions they may hold —there are the localities more immediately contiguous to the township ; there are the important districts of Charleston and Brighton; and there is the equally important district of the Valley of the G-rey. Little doubt need be entertained as to a similarity of feeling existiug in these different districts, with the exception perhaps, of the Grey Valley, which, though geographically as near to Westport as to any other point of the Coast, is comparatively secluded, and, in a political point of view, estranged. If there is at all a dissimilarity of feeling it will only be to this extent—that, while in Westport the expression of opinion has been unanimous, there may, in the more southern part of the Province, be a minority, yet only a mi. nority, antagonistic to the change. But whatever the feeling, it has been deputed to a Committee appointed at the late meeting to ascertain, as soon as possible, its true character ; and it is be to hjped that we shall not have long to wait until, by the action of that Committee, it shall have been thoroughly elicited throughout the length and breadth of the district. If do not mistake the object of the Committer's appointment, it is also part of their duty to educate as well as to elicit local feelings on the subject, and, in view of the Committee's early action in the matter, it may be well to remind the public, as was done by one of the

speakers at the meeting, that the preliminaries require pounds, shillings, and pence, but particularly pounds and shillings, quite as much as they required vociferous applause or significations of approval by a Jshow of empty hands.