SIR GEORGE GREY’S REFORMS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4382, 6 April 1875, Page 3

SIR GEORGE GREY’S REFORMS.

(From the Timara Herald, March 31.) It was a shrewd saying of Johnson, that nothing that is odd lasts long. He spoke, of course, of literary productions, but the maxim applies with equal truth to every department of thought. Men’s minds, especially Englishmen’s minds, are not readily jerked from one object to another; or, if they are led suddenly from their usual channels to some unaccustomed one, they soon abandon it and return very nearly to their old courses. When, therefore, Sir George Grey proposes, as a regimen for existing or threatened political disorders of the colony, the abolition of the gubernatorial office, and the creation of an elected Secretary of State to personally advise the Queen on colonial affairs, he is, we are convinced, carrying originality to the point of oddness, and injuring the better matured parts of his proposals, by the irrational element contained in this one. Neither Parliament nor public will seriously -weigh the merits of this singular suggestion ; or rather, if it should ever bo brought forward as a feature of apolioy, it will tend to subvert the whole of it, by drawing away attention from more practical and more necessary measures. Sir George Grey does not condescend to give any reasons for such a radical change in the machinery of Government, nor does ho attempt

to sketch out its probable or possible results. It is true he mentions that the system by which Colonial Governors are arbitrarily appointed by the Imperial Cabinet in power is a vicious one, that we should not in these colonies “ contribute to rivet their fetters on our fellow-countrymen at Home and that the Home Government may, without the consent of the colonists, give the Governor leave for two years. But are these reasons ? Will Sir George Grey seriously assert that the British Parliament is corrupted by the patronage 'of colonial governorships, or that any injury ever did or ever could accrue to a colony by its Governor having two years’ leave of absence ?_ If, as he says, a Governor is a mere machine, a mere useless encumbrance, it cannot matter whether he is absent on leave or not. If he is not a mere machine, but is essential to the government of a colony, still the colony does not suffer by his absence, because the Chief Justice or other dignitary takes his place, and only one salary is paid by the colonists.

However, great may have been the enthusiasm in the Choral Hall on Tuesday last, we are sure that this twaddle about the office of Governor did not .carry conviction to a si ogle mind, or represent the feeling of a single colonist. As the head of society in the colony, as a check on the violence of parties, and as a convenient and reliable channel of communication between the colonists and the Queen, the Governor, merely as an official, is worth his salary. Whether he is worth more than his salary depends very much on his personal qualities. If he happens to be a man of experience, energy, high principle, and mental culture, with a soul above perquisites or pleasure, he is enabled by his position to be of infinite service to the colony which he nominally rules. Sir George Grey was all of these ; and it is strange indeed to hear one who raised the office of Governor to its highest standard, and connected his name inseparably with the history of three great colonies, declaring now that the very circumstances under which he did so, compel a man to become of necessity a mere macliine. There are, of course, Governors and Governors ; and New Zealand has had an ex- j perieuce of sort* of them. Several have been blunderers ; one, Mr. Eyre, a mere serious 'mountebank ; but even the worst of them, Sir George Bowen, the very emblem of mechanical flunkeyism, was worth four thousand five hundred a-year.