Manawatu Standard (PUBLISHED DAILY.) The Oldest Daily Newspaper on the West Coast. FRIDAY, MAY 16, 1884. SIR GEORGE GREY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IV, Issue 143, 16 May 1884, Page 2

Manawatu Standard (PUBLISHED DAILY .) The Oldest Daily Newspaper on the West CCoat.s t. FRIDAY, MAY 16, 1884. SIR GEORGE GREY.

I The Lytellton Times once the firm supporter of Sir George Grey condemns his recent speech m unmeasured terms. It thus pours out the vial or its wrath: — "Coming from Sir G. Grey, receiving weight from his fame, brightened by his eloquence, and evidently captivating, as it did on Wednesday hundreds of imperfectly-informed listeners, Sir G. Grey's speech demands close treatment. Jt was dangerous because it appealed to his hearers 1 passions, and not to their nobler passions ; it was dangerous, because it misrepresented material facts and mis-stated important figures . it was dangerous, because it was a deliberate effort to isolate a single class, the artisans of our larger towns, from the rest of the community, and to place them, on the strength of utterly false assumptions, m a condition of angry estrangement from the rest of their fellow-colonists. The drift of Sir G. Grey's harangue was to persuade the artisans of Christchurch that they are down-trodden slaves who, with their hard-earned wages, are paying the interest on our colonial debt, when they ought to be farmers living m abundance on the land cheaply purchased or given to them for nothing. He drew a vivid and most pathetic picture of the pauper population of the great cities of the old world. He plainly inferred that his audience, or at any rate their children, were drifting towards a similar state of pauperism and degradation. Before going on

to discuss Sir G. G key's remedy for this awful condition of things it may be as well to deny point blank the truth of this dismal picture. 11