‘The burdens placed on the North under the 34 clauses dealing with matters assigned to the united provinces would be too heavy to bear , and that the relief, if relief it can be called, offered in the eighteen clauses dealing with the matters assigned to the Legislatures of the separate provinces falls so very short of complete self-government that the North is justified in refusing it. And we further say that to assume such an expensive form of government as that foreshadowed in the proposals, with its one Governor, three Lieutenant-Governors, eight Houses of Parliament, and four Civil Services, with no guarantee of increased revenue, would be little short of ruin for Queensland; while, if Territorial Separation were granted, increased prosperity to both portions of the colony — the result of better government — would more than cover any additional expenditure.’
The scheme, in its subsequently-amended form of two provinces, was rejected by the public opinion of the North for the same reason, that, instead of granting the self-government demanded by diversity of conditions, it maintained government by a southern majority on all points of essential importance. The objection is so fundamental that even if the Bill had passed through the Brisbane Parliament. The Central division obtained nothing by the new Bill, for the Centre remained by its provisions attached to the South, and the evidences of feeling on the subject which met the Governor during his late tour may be taken as an indication of the boiling-point of indignation to which Separatist opinion has risen in Rockhampton and the minor Central towns. Addresses praying for separation were presented to him at almost every stopping-point of his progress , and in Rockhampton at the time there was literally no other subject of conversation possible. Men and women alike appeared to guide all their actions by the effect which they might have upon the prospects of Separation. Rockhampton is the cradle of the Separation movement, which first originated there in 18(36. The sense of grievance of the Centre is no less acute than that of the North. It claims that in the last 80 years more than 2,500,000l. of its Customs duties have been appropriated by the Southern Government; that since the construction of the railway line the whole profit of the Central Railway has gone into the Brisbane Treasury; that a yearly surplus from its general revenue goes also into the Brisbane Treasury; that the sale of its public lands is conducted in a manner of which it totally disapproves, and that these valuable assets are rapidly disappearing, while the proceeds of the sale go to enrich the Southern division. The alteration of the Customs tariff, rendered necessary in Southern opinion, partly by the decreasing revenue,of the South, and partly in order to protect the embryo of Southern manufactures, presses no less heavily to the disadvantage of the Centre than to the disadvantage of the North. With all this, added to the consciousness of having endeavoured to obtain Separation before the North was in existence, the Centre has no doubt some cause for a feeling of exasperation, when it sees its claims ignored and itself excluded from even the very partial measure of relief which the Government had declared itself willing to offer to the North.
So far I have endeavoured only to recapitulate the case for Separation as it is felt to exist by the advocates of the movement . It would be difficult, I think, for anyone to travel through the North and Centre without realising that it is very strong — so strong as to be practically irresistible if a determined majority of the always increasing population persists in the demand for it. But in presence of the almost unanimously expressed objection to the compromise embodied in Sir Samuel Griffith’s Provincial Bill, the question arises, how came the Bill to be accepted by almost all the Northern members? In seeking for the answer it becomes clear that the demand for separation has not been up to the present time the persistent demand of a united majority. There have been large majorities in favour of it — the mass of public opinion probably gives at this moment a large majority in favour of it — but the absence of political ideals, and the substitution in their place of a simple practical regard for material interests, has operated to prevent any systematic cooperation between different sections of the population. A little while ago the interests of the sugar industry were very serfously affected by the labour legislation of the Brisbane Parliament. Separation seemed at that time to sugar planters the only hope of escape from ruin. The whole sugar industry was for the moment actively Separationist; but the mining industry, fearing that Separation would involve the indiscriminate admission of coloured labour, with a consequent fall in the rate of wages, stood by the South, and their vote overpowered the planters.
