Sir—l have been very carefully studying the utterances of our various public men, and perusing the various political articles appearing in the Press bearing on the subject cf our immediate future (political). The electors ap pear to be. divided into three parties. 1. The Centralists or Colonial party. 2. The Federal ists, who go in for two Provinces only—one consisting of the North Island and the other of the South Island. This party, again, holds within its bounds a not inconsiderable number who believe that two Provinces for the Middle Island are little better than one, and who have thrown out feelers in the direction of the annexation of part of Canterbury to Otago, permitting Canterbury to absorb Nelson and Marlborough in lieu of the country surrendered to Otago up to the Rangitata River. 3. The old Provincial party, who are quite content with the constitution under which we have lived already so long and so prosperously. I think it may be very safely taken for granted that the Centralist or Colonial party has but few supporters amongst the electors of this Province, that a majority of the electors will support the Federal party, and that a con siderable and not unintelligent minority still cling to our old Provincial institutions. Sir Dillon Bell has recently referred to the Centralists as an organisation "already too compact, secret, and powerful,"' aud there is a very wide spread desire on the part of many of our best public men, and also in the mind ot the great body of the electorate, to send a united snd powerful phalanx from this Province, who may meet that organization, and assist m de feating its designs. It is felt that if Canterbury and Otago were united, we would most probably be able to carry measures satisfactory to both Provinces ; but that, if opposed, the force of each Provinoe neutralising that of the other-neither the one

nor the other, nor both would have any weight and they would thus both be at the mercy ot; tlie North Island representatives, who would iiQt be slow to take advantage of their lolly, ami who would probably lay" upon them burdens hard to be borne. It appears to me, therefore, that the crying want of the political situation at present is a scheme which would mute Otago and Canterbury as one man. That scheme, I propose to propound. 