SIR GEORGE GREY'S FINANCE.

Globe, Volume VII, Issue 774, 13 December 1876, Page 3

SIR GEORGE GREY'S FINANCE.

To the Editor of the Globe. Sir, —As the session is now ended, and the abolition of the provinces is “uu fait accompli,” the country while settling down under the new Constitution must be turning its thoughts to finance. The next great question that will absorb all attention, and tax the powers of our politicians, will be ways and means. There is no better rule for obtaining a good future in any career than sound knowledge of, and reflections upon, the past, and a due consideration of the past ten years’ budgets, will be the best guide to the true finance for 1878. I wish now calmly to call public attention to what I deem one of the most extraordinary facts in my past life ; and in calling attention, I wish it fully understood, that there is neither malice nor partisanship in my motives, but a thoroughgoing desire te benefit my country, and even to benefit Sir George Grey himself. In the course of writing that long series of letters, pamphlets, and speeches for the public good, I was one day spoken to by a gentleman, who put into my hand a document, simply an advertisement, it is true, but certainly the most extra ordinary document that I ever heard or read of in ancient or modern polities “Sir George Grey offered £IOO to any accountant that could explain to him the accounts of our Government” —(this is New Zealand loans and receipts and expenditure). The gentleman who offered me the matters stated that he was aware of my ability to undertake the business, in short, he knew that I had been trained in one of the largest Banks in the world, also on the London Stock Exchange, and in the underwriter’s room at Lloyds’, London, &c, &c, &c. My reply was “No, thank you, I have other business to attend to,” and whether the public advertisement was answered by any person I know not. I should presume, from Hansard, and the figure that Sir Geo. Grey and his lieutenant, Mr Rees, cut in the last session, that Sir G. never obtained the required information. I never make a statement without a reason, and the public may as well know that there was quite a little sparring match between Mr Rees and his Grey faction on one side, and Major Atkinson on the other side, on the subject of a Bills account, which the Grey party could not understand, and indeed they became abusive, because they could not be made to understand it. Any. ordinary accountant could have set them right, but the gallant Major was content to give the facts, and did by no means descend to the level of a full book-keeping explanation. From that and a careful criticism of the action of the whole of the Gray faction on finance, it is obvious Sir George was evidently still in*the dark about New Zealand accounts.

In my own mind arose queer thoughts—Sir George Grey, the great Pro-consul, is in the dark about New Zealand, accounts, comes to me with £loo please Mr Treadwell open my eyes on this subject ? I was amazed. I felt like I did when as a boy, at the Fete de Paques, I, having bought a splendid golden lion, took it home delighted, but stripping off the tinsel, I found it was only gingerbread, which speedily came to grief under my grinders. The tinsel came off the Parliamentary gingerbread with a vengeance. In my quiet hermitage I took our last ten years’ accounts, and found some very nice pills for the Ministry, when I have the chance of administering a political aperient to those honourable gentlemen; but meantime I had decided that no man in this country, not even Sir George, was entitled to suck my brains, and then to swagger on the floor of the House—a daw in borrowed feathers —his gingerbread furnished with my solid gold tinsel, and acting the golden lion —by dint of my prompting, his ignorance all concealed beneath an intellectual exterior. “ Let all the ends, thou aimest at, be thy country’s, thy God’s, and truth’s,” is perhaps the beat explanation of my mental position ; and, although I had no work to do, other than to follow my own dictation, yet that dictation was, “That it was not morally lawful to assist the Grey faction in their unreasonable opposition ; £IOO, or £IOOO, or any sum whatever, was not to be thought of nothing but the public good. I look upon my intellect as not my own property, but the property of my country, and of my century. If I could think my mind to be my own I should never trouble the public again; but surely the lamp of human thought was not kindled to linger and die unseen in the dull tomb of eternal forgetfulness. Any sensible mind recognises it to be as true now as it was two thousand years ago. . Non emm gazae, neque consulans Summovet lictor miseros tumultus Mentis, et curas laqueata circum Tecta volantes. And prefers the quiet home to the noise of dusty crowds or the glitter of palaces. So far for a chapter in my quiet life ; but forget me, and look out on the near future. Can you trust ? Can any party trust ? Can New Zealand trust the helm of our affairs to Sir George Grey, who declares, by advertisement, that he is ignorant of the published accounts of the country of which he has been Governor, or in which he was Superintendent, and where he now leads “ her Majesty’s Opposition.” If the public can trust him, I cannot - decidedly not. Is it not true that New Zealand, more than any laud, needs a good financier for a leader ? one in whom the public can trust, as the sailors trusted Nelson, or the soldiers leaned on the Iron Duke 1 For we are— A Kail way Company A Telegraph Company A Bank of Deposit A Life Assurance Company An Ocean Mail Company A Pastoral and Agricultural Land Company. The objects and schemes that constitute the politics of the old world arc dead for us. The freshness of our young life hursts upon us as commercial politics, transactions and aims unknown to other lands must constitute our daily political'life. : Yours, &C, J, W. The AD WELL. P.S.—The general public are not aware that the whole of the accounts of New Zealand, with a summary for tho past ten years, may bo hid for 15s, at Mr Lake’s, High street, the Government bookseller’s, so that any hard headed working man can learn and make himself acquainted with the accounts that Sir G. Grey advertises himself ignorant of. There are faults and omissions in these accounts, hut the substance is all there, though not in the best of shapes.