SIR GEORGE GREY ON THE STUMP.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 477, 28 December 1875, Page 3

SIR GEORGE GREY ON THE STUMP.

{Australasian, December 18th )

Sir George Grey has taken the earliest opportunity the recess allowed him to meet hif? constituents, and to render an account of his action during the session. He has met a large meeting at Auckland, and has been received with enthusiastic applause. When this fact is considered, together with the extravagant nature of the speech, we are almost tempted to believe that the electors of Auckland are as eccentric as their representative. If any fixed conclusion could be drawn from the applause with which Sir George Grey's speech was greeted, it would be that the local spirit of provincialism, which returned Sir George Grey to Parliament, and which afterwards so utterly collapsed, had become revived, and that the city was strongly opposed to the abolition policy of the Government. But it would be a mistake to draw any such inference. The fact seems to be that the meeting was simply carried away by Sir George Grey's volubility and erratic enthusiasm. There is no quality which finds a readier response in the average mind than folly when it can ally itself with the bigotry and prejudice of the majority. Sir George Grey is an adept in touching these chores. He is guided to them by an inner sympathy, and certainly in his Auckland speech he played upon them very successfully. Doubtless, Sir George Grey knew that he was talking nonsense when he declared that it was monstrous—" a crime against the whole human race"—for the General Assembly to pass the Abolition Act without reference to the opinions of the people. What are Parliaments appointed for but to deal

with the pressing questions of the day as they arise ? Sir George Grey know i well enough that it is not the theory or the practice of English Parliamentary rule to refer to a plebiscite questions on which the Government is supported by an overwhelming majority of the Parliament. Indeed, it may be said that in a democratic community the only hope of getting a wise, good measure of any importance passed is when it crops up unexpectedly in the course of the currency of a Parliament, and is thus not compromised by the factious violence, the ignorant half views, and class and party prejudices of the unrestricted mass of the people. And it is quite certain that the question of the abolition of the Provincial Government system presented itself in this way. It was forced upon the Government and the Parliament as the only solution of a difficult position. The Provincial Governments had totally broken down. They could not pay their way, and were compelled to seek the financial aid of the General Government year by year, Consequently, on any sound theory of representative government, they had lost their raison d'etre, and were properly swept away. Elective Assemblies may be suitable agencies for raising money by taxation, but for administering the expenditure of money which they have not the responsibility of providing they are the worst that could possibly be devised.

Sir George Grey retains his old animosity to some "colonial aristocracy" of his own imagination. No brawling Eastern Market demagogue talks in a strain of more sycophantic flattery of the jealousies and prejudices of the lowest classes than does this ultra democratic kluight. All this is mixed up with an assertion of the right of the provinces to determine for themselves whether or not they would enter into the form of government the General Assembly had appointed for them. The speaker very much mistakes the feelings of his countrymen, and fails to understand the genuinely English sentiment of the supremacy of Parliament, when he offers sophistry of this kind to the citizens of a British colony. The policy of separation, to which it appears that Sir George Grey and the other leaders of the Opposition have nailed their colors, must be tested by the touchstone of public approval at the forthcoming elections. Any impartial well wisher of the colony would regret to see it accept so lame and impotent a solution, and to view it halt half-way in so wise and timely a reform as that initiated by the late Government. This is a question, however, which may safely be left to the good sense of the people of the colony, who are quite able to compare for themselves the advantages of union in one harmonious integral whole with the inconveniences of division into petty, jealous, virtually hostile provinces. But passing from this scheme to its advocacy by Sir George Grey, there can be but one feeling with regard to the manner and spirit by which that is characterised. The feeling can only be that of regret to see a politician who has been useful in his generation come out of his retirement in his old age apparently for the mere purpose of seeking to perpetuate a temporary arrangement which has been long since outgrown, and who, in pursuit of that purpose, abandons the associations of his class and the traditions of his past, and comes forward as a sham democrat to sneer at distinctions in which he himself shares, and to foment class prejudices and passions in which he can have no part.