SIR GEORGE GREY AND THE CONSTITUTION.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4263, 18 November 1874, Page 2

SIR GEORGE GREY AND THE CONSTITUTION.

TO THE EDITOR. SlB, —By this time I almost feel ashamed at the extent to which I have trespassed on your space and your readers' patience. This present communication will close my remarks, which it must be remembered are purely negative criticism of the programme of Sir G. Grey. I have not professed, nor do I now, to set out even an outline of the positive arguments for governmental organisation and against provincial anarchy. Sir Arthur Helps, the Secretary, to the Privy Council, in the following passage, puts in a nutshell the great question with which this colony has to deal: —" How much depends in a free government on the happy admixture of local and central authority ! If. there be. too much local power, how much time will elapse before the results of collected wisdom and the experience of the shrewdest men in public affairs will be carried into the local administration; how much unkindness and severity will be added to the local malignity already sufficient in most places ; how completely the imperial ideas are likely to bo -sacrificed to petty privileges and near-sighted interests. On the other'hand, if the central power prevails too much, the minds and energies of the small communities dependent upon it, are weakened by disuse; at the centre itself | too much influence falls into the hands of factions, so that suddenness becomes the arbitress ' of national affairs." (" Friends in Council," Ist series, vol. ii., p. 63.) Those colonists who were here in the early years of Provincial Government have a vivid idea of the pandemonium which the intensified unkindness and local malignity produced in this city. .For the other side of the picture I will again use the authority of that great writer, De Tocqueville, to 6how what " administrative centralisation" in its true nature in. In this author's book, "Ancien Regime," or Old France before the Revolution of 1789 —a work not so well known, but equal in political wisdom and sagacity to the " Democracy"— any one may read for himself a most truthful and vivid account of the origin and nature of that " centralisation" which, to this day, curses unhappy France. I cannot here make large extracts, but let those who think this matter of Buch serious national and pressing moment as to interest us (and of them I confess I am one) read the chapters 2,3, 4, 5, and 6 of book ii. "A single body (the King's Council) or institution placed in the centra of the kingdom regulated tho public administration of the country ; the same Minister directed almost all tho internal affairs of the kingdom ; in each province a single Government agent managed all the details ; no secondary administrative bodies existed, and none which could act before they had been set in motion by the authority of the State ; courts of extraordinary jurisdiction judged the causet'in which the Adminis-

tration was interested, and sheltered all its agents. . . Under the social condition of Prance anterior to the Revolution of 1789, as well as at the present day, there was no city, town, borough, village, or hamlet in-.the kingdom—there was neither hospital, church fabric, religious house, nor college, which could have an independent will in the management of its private affairs, or which could administer its own property according to its own choice. Then, as now, the executive administration held the whole Prenoh people in tutelage." ("Prance before the Revolution," p.p. 42, 50, 57, 58, 62, 64, 72.) As the whole administration of the country was directed by a single body, so nearly the entire management of home affairs was entrusted to the care of one" single agent—the Comptroller-General. As the Central Administration had but one agent in Paris, so it had likewise but a single agent in each province, the Intendant. All powers which the Council possessed were accumulated in the hands of tins officer, and he exercised them in the first instance. Like the Council he was at once administrator and judge. The ancient Intendant was merely another name for the modern Prefect. The description of the , lengths to which this terrible state of things was earned in practice would be perfectly ludicrous were it not appalling in its effect upon the life of a great people. The Government had,a finger in the concerns of every town, the least as well asthe greatest. Thus we read how it regulated the public festivities, ordered public rejoicing?,,, caused salutes to be fired, and houses to be illuminated ; how it fined, a member of the Burgher Guard 20 livres for absenting himself from a Te Deum ; how a minute of the King's Council had to be obtained to repair the damage done by the wind', to the church steeple, or to rebuild the falling gables of the parsonage, and how it always took at least a year, and more often two or three years, before the demand was graciously granted. Not. Only did the Royal edict from time to time modify the administration of all the towns in Prance, but the local by-laws of each town were frequently over-ruled by orders in Council passed on the sole recommendation of the Intendant, and without the knowledge of the citizens. In short the towns of Prance could neither establish an octroi on articles of consumption, nor levy a rate, nor mortgage, nor sell, nor sue, nor' farm their property, nor administer that property, nor even employ their own surplus revenues without the intervention of an Order in Council, made on the report of the Intendant. Sometimes the Council insisted on compelling individuals to prosper whether they would or no. Innumerable Ordinances constrained artizans to use certain methods, and make certain articles ; inspectors-general of manufactures visited the provinces to insist on the fulfilment - of these regulations. Some Orders in Council prohibited the cultivation of certain crops ; others ordered the destruction of such vines as had been planted in, as they thought, an unfavorable soil; others actually tore the beautiful webs out of the frames because they had a thread more or a thread less than the regulation number. This is the sort of thing which provoked the famous retort, now become proverbial, from, the Norman manufacturer when asked by Colbert what the Government could do for trade, " Laisser faire et laisser passer." Further, most valuable information on this head of continental Bureaucracy will be found in Mr. Laing's " Notes of a Traveller in Europe;' also in an excellent article in the Westminster Review for January, 1871, pp. 180 190, entitled "Prance and Germany." The appalling effects of such a regime on the character of a people may be read in one of the most powerful pages of the "Democracy in America," p. 94, vol. I. The life of such a people is summed up with epigrammatic incisiveness :—"Their oscillations between servitude and license are,perpetual." . Such is real, genuine centralisation. It is not my object here to, descend to party politics ; but I may just add that the only thing like this I ever saw was the state, of matters under a certain Superintendental regime in this colony. . , '■'■■■ ..•_

I must confess that when I hear, in the mouths of some people,.such an expression. as this, ,viz :—"lf you abolish provincialism, what will you put in its place ?" it fills me with misgiving. For what is the state of feeling of which such talk is born ? Has the paltry and meddlesome spirit of provincialism, always groping' around for something wherewith to busy itself and to keep itself in countenance—has it, by its breeding up of a placehunting class, a class with their fists closed, their eyes and their mouths wide open, always looking to the Government to help them ; has it, I say, quite succeeded in obliterating the broad and bold lines of character and in extinguishing the manly and self-helping spirit of the British people ? Let us hope not. . But really have we forgotten that we are most interested and best qualified to look after our own local affairs, aye, and to do it too without pay, merely in a healthy spirit of public duty ? Now for this precious " Constitutional and Unconstitutional." It has been well said" that when a man is hard up for an argument against something he does not like, he always (if he is mean enough to do it) saves his credit for wisdom and discredits his opponent by denouncing the measure as "unconstitutional," knowing as much about what that is as the canine species are reputed to know about their paternal relations. There is always in free nations some cant phrase convenient for. suchpeople, differing according to the age and country. In the Roman Republic the usualdodge of this sort was the cry "Ilegnum pctere ;" in England some century ago it was,. "The Church in danger," or "Nopopery," &c. There are several definitions of this phrase "Constitutional" : perhaps the best is that of Sir G. C. Lewis :—" When certain practices or usages, though not legally binding on"any part of the community, have been constantly observed both by the governors and the governed, they are properly styled constitutional, and any measure or practice contrary to them is styled unconstitutional." ("Use and Abuse of Political Terms," p. 6.) Is it unconstitutional for our National Parliament to exercise, in the mode prescribed by law, a power which the law has given it ? Is it unconstitutional, when the public organism of a country, in the noble phrase of Burke,. "by a constitutional policy working after the pattern of nature," and in obedience to the law of all living things, changes its form to suit the expanding needs, and to conserve the integrity of its national life ? The life is primary and essential, the form is secondary and accidental. Is it unconstitutional when by its inborn strength the organism assimilates what is congenial and nutritive, and by the same physiologic action extrudes elements which are 1 foreign and uncongenial to its nature ? This is just what we are about to do.. Is it unconstitutional when in the courseof a country's history full and free scope is -given to the play of the great law of "evolution," integrating where integration is needful, differentiating when that is necessary ? This is. what we propose to do, and what I have shown was done all through English history."" All this is not only constitutional, but it is, in the very highest and best sense, tried by the tests alike of philosophy and of history, constitutional. I cannot more fitly take leave of the subject than in the words of one of our greatest living historical scholars, Air. Freeman :—"The continued national life of the people has remained unbroken for fourteen hundred years. At no moment has the tie between the present and the past been wholly rent asunder ; at no moment have Englishmen sat down to put together a wholly new Constitution, in obedience to some dazzling theory. Each change in our law and Constitution has been, hot the bringing in of anything wholly new, but the development and improvement of Something that was already old. The great march of political development has never wholly stopped. New and foreign elements have from time to time thrust themselves into our law ; but the same spirit which could develop and improve whatever was native has commonly found means, sooner or later, to cast forth again what was new and foreign J . .. . On the other haid, institutions which once answered a good and useful purpose, have Bometimes, through change of timeß, changed their nature, and have become instruments of evil instead of good. . . . The wisdom of our forefathers was ever shown, not in a dull and senseless clinging to things as they were at any given moment, but in that spirit, the spirit

alike of the true reformer and the true conservative, which keep 3 the whole fabric standing, by repairing and improving- from time to time whatever portions of it stand in need of repair or improvement. Let us ever stand fast in the old paths ; but the old paths of England have ever been the paths of progress; the ancient custom has ever been to shrink from mere change, for the sake of change, but fearlessly to change whenever change was really needed." With these -wise words of the great living historian, I can fitly close my criticisms of Sir G. Grey's petition.—l am, &c, John H. Shaw, L.L.B.