Historic leaves, volume 5, April, 1906 - January, 1907

[44] agreed to a seperation provided the line of demarkation and the terms and conditions could be settled between the parties. In accordance with this vote, a committee was chosen to confer with a committee of the petitioners to settle these points and to report to the town. After a laborious investigation, the parties agreed, and a report was made. The town then, without making any substantial objections to those terms, rejected the report and instructed their representatives to oppose a seperation on any terms whatever. I now ask, Where is the consistency, where the sincerity of the town in the course they have pursued? If they were determined to oppose us, why did they not take that stand at first, and not have added insincerity to opposition? For as the affair has terminated, can we believe otherwise than that they intended to play upon the credulity of the petitioners? That they intended that they should give them a pretense for opposition when they were already from pecuniary motives predisposed to oppose them? Since the town has shown no substantial reasons why they oppose a seperation, we cannot but attribute it to an admission of one of the committee who had thoroughly investigated the subject, namely, that the westerly section pays into the town treasury annually $2,000 more than is expended upon them, which goes to support the general municipal concerns of the town. Whether an argument of this kind ought to have any weight upon this question, I leave it to the good sense of the committee to decide. I shall now endeavor to develop some of the motives which actuate the remonstrants upon this subject. In our opinion, the opposition from this quarter can be traced to a particular point,—two individuals who have long enjoyed (we think from courtecy) certain privileges on a fishing stream are, we think, the backbone of the remonstrants. We do not pretend to say that all who are upon the remonstrance are influenced by these men, but we do contend, and we think truly, had it not been for this fishing stream, the remonstrance upon your table would not have been presented to the Legislature. These individuals, one of which, by the various offices he sustains in the town and his long being a member of the Legislature, has scattered his crude and one-sided opinions far and