THE GREAT PRO-CONSUL.

Marlborough Daily Times, Volume III, Issue 236, 25 May 1881, Page 2

THE GREAT PRO-CONSUL.

Commenting upon Sir George Grey’s late speech at the Thames, the Christchurch Pro s's says :—“ The logical conclusion of the scheme inevitably would be the abolition of all government whatever, and a return to the first principles on the part of the population. Every man would have a certain portion of land, it is true, with which lie might fill his belly after the manner of some tribes of Indians of whom we read ; but even then difficulties would arisjv concerning the different quality of the lao One man would get his share on a rocky summit with twenty feet of snow on it, another in an impassable swamp, while others would batten on the warm pumice of Taupo, tho stiff clay of Auckland, or the succulent shingle of the Canterbury plains. Difficulties concerning the quality of different traces of land are tlie primal cause of all wars, and, as far as we can see, Sir George’s scheme would speedily work itnelf out by the universal prevalence of internocine contests among the inhabitants of bis Utopia. But these are matters of detail which his followers will have to settle among themselves. We are not of their number, and it is no affair of ours, therefore, if their leader’s policy presents ever so exasperating anomalies and contradictions. We have drawn attention to a few peculiarities in his scheme in a friendly way, merely to illustrate our opinion that the distinctness with which he has chosen for once to express himself will not tend to make his policy acceptable. Perhaps this was unnecessary, however, for by this time surely, everybody who can connect ideas at all must know what the whole drift of Sia George Grey’s tenets lead to. He contemplates pure communism, and nothing else ; and nobody who is not prepared Vf go with him to the whole length of communism, can with any show of reason, accept any part of his policy. We do not believe that the people of this country, or any considerable section of them, are prepared to exchange their existing state of society for one closely resembling that of the South Sea Islanders, but inferior to it wherever it differs from it. We believe, on the contrary, that they prefer to remain very much as they are for the present, and when they make changes, to make them in the direction not of destroying that they have, but of building higher and better institutions on the broad foundations that they have already laid with so rnnch energy and perseverance. When Sir George Grey depicts New Zealand as a country given over to slavery, where a few wealthy men luxuriate in voluptuous case while tho masses toil and groan beneath their feet, he simply exercises the privileges of a chartered romancer. Nobody believes a. word of it, not even those who applaud his marvellous fictions the loudest. If they do believe it, if they are really sensible of tho wrongs he tells them they are suffering, what cravens they must be to submit for a single hour to such a servile fate ! What an insult for any man to tell the pc ijflc of this free country that they are broken-spirited slaves, trodden upoi* very moment of their lives by a handful of pampered tyrants ! But it is only Sir George Grey who says so, and therefore nobody " cares.