THE GREY ADMINISTRATION.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1710, 13 August 1879, Page 3

THE GREY ADMINISTRATION.

[“ Australasian.”] The Grey Government in New Zealand, after receiving an unprecedented amount of toleration and leniency, has been condemned by a substantial majority of tho House of Representatives as unworthy of the ■ confidence of Parliament. Sir George Grey, with that desperate clinging to office which he has continued to show after a prolonged tenure, meaning nothing but prolonged disgrace and humiliation, struggled hard but impotently to avert his impending doom. When his Government was at the last grasp, Sir George Grey tried the unconstitutional course of appealing from Parliament to the mob by getting up a “ mass " meeting at Wellington. This, however, proved a fiasco, and the end, so far as the present Parliament is concerned, has now come. The colony is to be congratulated on the result, which probably puts a term to the career of a Ministry whose existence was quite incompatible with tho peace and prosperity of tho country. Sir George Grey obtained office by a discreditable fluke. The vote given against the Atkinson Government was only obtained upon the understanding that a new third party was to be formed, and that Sir George Grey was not to be its head. The power gained in this way he has persistently used for the purpose of fomenting class dissension, civil and social strife, and bad feeling towards the Imperial connection. He has carried the license of personal imputations to the most extreme limits, and has sought by every means in his power to disturb and embitter the relations of parties and classes in the colony. He has shown an unscrupulousness in the administration of Government rare in the Premier of a British community, and has sought to isolate New Zealand from the other colonies, and, by getting up quarrels with tho Governor and the Colonial Office, to weaken its dependence on tho mother country. Ho has shown by his conduct in Parliament and in the Cabinet Council Chamber, that professions of the most extreme democracy are quite compatible with the spirit and practice of an autocrat. He has tampered with the electoral roll, and by his notorious conduct in advising the Governor by his prerogative to veto a Bill passed by Government support through both Houses, struck an insidious blow at the supremacy of parliamentary government. And now the popular House declares itself weary of the continuance of this state of affairs, and passes a vote of want of confidence in the Government. Sir George Grey has, so we learn by telegraph, been allowed, under certain conditions, an appeal to ths country by means of dissolution, and if that appeal is accepted, with the country the issue must rest.