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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 285, 30 November 1881, Page 4

A SiiAitp "Rebuke. — The Wanganui Herald, Mr Ballances paper, thus delivers sentiments on Sir George Grey's late speech at Auckland :— " We have always freely recognised Sir George Grey as a tribune of the people, intractable and impracticable, it is true, but whose principles were colonial, and whose sentiments were broad and liberal. But there runs throughout his recent utterances the very opposite of what might be expected from a colonial statesman. His appeal to the local selfishness of his audience, and the reference to the incarceration of the Natives is the meanest pronouncement ever made by a public man. We have no hesitation in saying that his statement after being ' hampered by his colleagues ' is a falsehood. He knows he was cordially supported by his colleagues in every act of public policy. Mr Macandrew and Mr Fisher never thwarted him surely. Mr Sheehan seconded loyally, and even without criticism, whatever was promulgated. Colonel Whitmore might criticise, but he acquiesced in the decision of the majority. And does Sir George Grey mean to say that Mr Stout aud Mrßallance were not always as ready to advance, as eager to lay down the broad lines of a liberal policy, as he was himself ? What a contemptible meanness it is to turn upon his colleagues without giving one fact to justify him, and without, we venture to affirm, one fact to give. We do not wonder at the position Sir George Grey finds himself in. He has hardly a foPower at this moment in the colony certain to be returned in the present election. He has bid high for the Auckland vote ; but men in the mass are not governed by the lowest instincts, and his appeal will not produce anything like its old response."