A VICTORIAN OPINION OF SIR GEORGE GREY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4402, 29 April 1875, Page 2

A VICTORIAN OPINION OF SIR GEORGE GREY.

(From the Melbourne Telegraph.) The George Higiubotham has long stood alone in Australian politics—unaccompanied, and without a follower, save the forlorn form of Mr. G. Y. Smith. The hon. gentleman has now an ally in ability equal to himself, and of more conspicuous position. Sir 1 George Grey, the most distinguished of colonial Governors, has left the beautiful island home in the Gulf of Flauraki, where it was understood he meant to spend the remainder of his days, has been elected member of the New Zealand Assembly,, and Superintendent of the Auckland province, and has made a speech which has been received with enthusiasm in the land, and which shows us either that Sir George has studied Mr. Higinbotham attentively, or that the views and genius' of the two men are strangely kindred.

Sir George Grey has had official experience in Western Australia, He has governed South Australia ; twice he has governed the Cape, and twice New Zealand, having been sent back in each case to deal with emergencies. He speaks, therefore, as one having authority, and the result of his experience and of his cogitations in his lonely home at Kawau is one of profound dissatisfaction with the Colonial Office and its system. We print the salient portions of his remarkable address elsewhere. It will be seen that he points out how the colonies are attended to not by the Ministers, but by the clerks under them. He maintains that Governors are ex officio poor creatures, whose sole object is to smile, and smile to everybody, keep_ out of disturbances, and pocket their salaries, and how colonies could with dignity do very well without them. The high salaries they are paid has a tendency, he thinks, to encourage extravagance everywhere. He has some racy stories to tell, how the appointments are regarded by Imperial Ministers as sops for friends in misfortune, or opponents who have to be got rid of, Mr. Pope Hennessy and our late guest, Mr. Hucane, being included in this list. Put the portion of the address people are most likely to enjoy is that in which Sir George deals with the honors heaped upon colonial politicians. He regards the Order of St. Michael and St. George as a new means of “getting at” colonial statesmen. Colonists,he thinks, should scorn a paltry rank which is not recognised outside our local boundaries, and which can only be exhibited in England with a sheepfacedness neither comfortable to the individual nor creditable to the community. The revival of this forgotten Maltese order. Sir George Grey considers, was not only unworthy, as separating the colonists from the British population, to whom it is unknown, but it has a political significance not to be overlooked. It encourages local politicians to look outside the colony for their rewards, and seek, not the confidence of the colonists, but the goodwill of the Colonial Office. Let colonists, contends Sir George, who have done good service to their own colony, and through it to the Empire, be enrolled in the great Imperial'orders of which all Englishmen were justly proud. There would then be the safeguard that public vigilance at Home would see the honors worthily bestowed. But with new orders—for colonial circulation only—the safeguard did not exist, and honors were given at the mere recommendation of a Governor, who was thus endowed with a means of influencing colonial men and colonial politics, illegitimate because one which the people who were governed had no means of controlling. There is much in this reasoning of which the common

sense of the people of Victoria and of all the colonies must heartily approve. So far Sir George Grey is distinctive. In his constructive aspect he is still more decidedly Higinbotham in tone and proposal. He urges the colonists to aim at two things. The first is to encourage all and any legislation which will prevent the “ rich becoming richer and the poor poorer,” which will check those strong class distinctions and inequalities of wealth, and the fearful misery consequent thereon, whioll the mother country has inherited from dark and ancient times. The second is to bring the colonies into direct communication with the Crown. This he would effect by abolishing the now useless office of Governor, and substituting for it a Secretary of State for the colony, appointed by the colony, and resident in London. The Secretary would be a member of the Privy Council, a Right Honorable all the world over, a man of high position. The Queenwouldherselfweloome such an officer, and be pleased to grant him the right of direct communication on all matters connected with the colony he represented. Her Majesty's natural desire to bind the Empire together and guard it for her children would induce her to grant this favor, apart from the benefit which it would confer on the colonists, and the independence of the position in which it would place them. The Secretaries of State for the various colonies, if this system were adopted, would be a powerful body in London, and the office would form a new and lofty object of ambition. The opportunity does not present itself on this occasion of either endorsing the views of Sir George Grey or disputing them. But in putting them before before our readers we have shown that in the person of the ex-Governor and tried statesman New Zealand and the colonies at large have acquired a new force.