SIR GEORGE GREY'S PETITION.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4263, 18 November 1874, Page 3

SIR GEORGE GREY'S PETITION.

(From the Canterbury Press, November 10.) We publish this morning among our interprovincial telegrams the substance of the reply of His Excellency the Governor to the petition addressed to him by Sir G. Grey. Our readers will remember the general purport of the petition. Sir George assumed that Mr. Vogel's object in visiting England was to apply to the Imperial Parliament for such an alteration of the Constitution Act as would conferon the General Assembly the power of abolishing the provinces. He urged various considerations why such abolition should be regarded as unconstitutional and revolutionary. And he concluded by instructing the Governor as to his duty in two particulars. First he hoped His Excellency "would feel that it was his bounden duty to his Queen and country" to summon the General Assembly to meet with the least possible delay. Secondly, he prayed the Governor to telegraph immediately to the Imperial authorities that there was no person qualified to communicate with them respecting the proposed abolition, and that any negotiations on the subject would be illegal and a violation of the rights, liberties, and privileges of the people of New Zealand. To this tirade the Governor gives a courteous and dignified, but crushing reply. In a few sentences he disposes of Sir G. Grey and his memorial most effectually. He points out, m the first place, that the petition invites him to " act independently of, if not in opposition to," his responsible advisers, a course winch, he rightly adds, " would bo justified only by great and exceptional emergencies." He proceeds to meet tho petitioner's statements with an emphatic denial. There is no intention, he says, on the part of the Colonial Government to make any application of the kind alleged ; nor is there any necessity for doing so to enable the Assembly to carry out the constitutional changes it has declared advisable. There is also "no person ' qualified '—if by that expression is meant 'accredited'" —to negotiate with the Imperial Government on tho subject of ■■• tho abolition of the provinces. The Governor hopes this information, will satisfy Sir G. Grey that his petition as to the assembling of Parliament ought not to be complied with; and also that it is needless to telegraph to Her Majesty's Ministers a fact which must be as well known to them "as it might be supposed to have been known to every person in this colony. His Excellency concludes by expressing his sense of the value of Sir George's opinion on the affairs of New Zealand ; in consideration of which he is willing to. forward any representations the latter may wish to make. But with regard to his conduct as Governor of NewZealand, with every respect for Sir G. Grey's greater experience, he must claim tho right of acting "according to his own view of his duty." Altogether we fancy Sir George begins to feel that he has made himself rather ridiculous. Ho must wish he had been less hasty in rushing into print with his petition. The Governor's reply puts him in tho wrong on every point. It shows that ho was entirely mistaken in his facts; that his statements as to the proceedings of the Government were without foundation; and—though His Excellency writes with studied courtesy—manages to convey a strong hint that tho good advice he so freely bestowed on the Governor m his memorial was a piece of uncalled-for, not to say impertinent, interference.