THE MELBOURNE ARGUS ON SIR GEORGE GREY’S LETTER.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4459, 5 July 1875, Page 5

THE MELBOURNE ARGUS ON SIR GEORGE GREY’S LETTER.

The Argils seems, in regard to Sir George Grey’s notorious letter, to be in the same benighted condition as ourselves and other papers. It Gad evidently failed to grasp the meaning of the author after the fashion of the Wairarapa Standard and New Zealand Herald. This seems a pity, but as the Argus is in the same class with ourselves, we publish its remarks’ with a melancholy sense of satisfaction : What is the matter with Sir George Grey ? His eccentricity —to employ no harsher term—is assuming so extraordinary a character, that his re-entry into public life promises to be productive of consequences as disastrous to his own character as they may be injurious to the province which has lately elected him as - its Superintendent. In a letter addressed to and published in the Wairarapa Standard, he expresses the painful apprehensions he experiences on account of the action of the Imperial Government in appointing colonial Governors for party objects or as a reward for party services. . Owing to this terrible state of things, he is of opinion that the whole future of New Zealand —“ life, property, social relations ma,y be “ sacrificed to class feelings which should have no existence there.” But what, it may be asked, is the immediate source of danger? Nothing more nor less than the adoption by England of the system of private executions which has been established in these colonies ! Our readers must not expect us to supply them with any clue to' the tortuous workings of Sir George Grey’s mind, or to explain by what reversal of all the ordinary processes of logic that gentleman has succeeded in connecting private executions in the Mother country with the sacrifice of life, property, and social relations in New Zealand. Barnaby Budge might do it, but we relinquish the effort in despair. Nine years ago, he tells us, a man named Townley was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for murder, but reprieved on the ground of insanity. The poorer classes in England, Sir George says, believe that he was saved from execution on account of his rank and money. A poor man named Wright, who murdered his paramour, was ordered to be hung, and although the working-classes were of opinion he ought not to suffer death, that opinion was disregarded, and he suffered the extreme penalty of the law. “The lower classes,” Sir George informs us with the utmost gravity and circumstantiality, “ strove to console their wrongfully slain friend by their cheers ringing as tho last sounds in Iris dying ears but the upper ten thousand; including the “foreign noblemen” who send out despatches to colonial Governors, and are the bane of Mr. Higinbotham’s existence, hung poor Wright “ out of the way, and so far the apparent advantage lay with them.” From Horsemonger-lane gaol, where this infamous tragedy was perpetrated, Sir George Grey takes a flying leap to Queensland ; and he proceeded to quote from one of Sir George Bowen’s despatches to the Home Government the narrative \of an execution which took place within the precincts of tho prison at Brisbane, when the convict, who was paralysed with abject fear, was obliged to be carried to the gallows by some aborigines, who were confined in the gaol at the same time. The then Governor. of Queensland, in order to make out a strong case in favor of private executions, and not displeased, perhaps, to exhibit the extent of his reading, introduced some allusions to tho Tower of London, the Bastille in Paris, the dungeons of the Council of Ten at Venice, the mediaeval pictures of the Last Judgment, and the accounts given of tho fate of State criminals by the ancient Greek historians. These details seem to have had the same effect on Sir George Grey as every allusion to his unfeeling daughters had upon tho distraught mind of poor old Lear, and his comments on that part of the despatch which relatesto tho intervention of the aborigines in the Brisbane execution must bo read in order to be credited. Ho says it was • wicked to employ them for such a purpose, and “sinful to irritate tho white race by exhibiting that inferior race before them in most loathsome and repulsive form.” A deadly vendetta may

spring up between the whites and the blacks in Queensland, and all owing to this simple incident. Who is at the bottom of all it ? The explanation is not far to seek. With Sir George Grey, “ reasons are as plenty as blackberries.” “It is the hatred of class which •• leads to such things.” The Superintendent of Auckland promises to solve the problem of ages. If he were asked to account for the origin of evil, we have no doubt he would reply, “It .is the hatred of class, in combination with the appointment of a couple of strangers to govern the Garden of Eden.” Sir George Bowen little thought when he was penning that unfortunate despatch that he was driving another nail in the coffin of Imperial ascendancy in the Australian colonies, or that he was furnishing a watchful ex-Governor in Now Zealand with an additionally damning proof of the tyranny of the upper classes. Such was the fact, however ; and Sir George Grey announces to the universe, through the coluins of the Wairarapa Standard, that “for the third time, in this shocking case in Brisbane gaol, the poorer classes appear again to have been worsted.” Nothing could have been more maladroit, either than our present Governor's allusions to Venice ; for they stirred a train of thought—or rather they fired one—which has exploded with a terrible report. Sir George Grey has been .looking up Sismondi, I t'U'U, Ilallam, and possibly Romualdi; and he has found out that this was one of the maxims of the Council of Ten“ Lastly, if any party leaders are found in the provinces, they must be exterminated under some pretext or another; but there must be no recourse to ordinary justice. Let poison do the work of the executioner. This is less odious and more profitable.” The italics are his own. The Council also approved of secret. executions, either by poison or drowning; and as a ' climax to his letter. Sir George Grey quotes the following thrilling passage from Hallam ; —“So late as 1767 a packet of poison was sent from the Council of Ten, with directions for its cautious use in ridding them and the world of a person reported dangerous.” The distinguished correspondent of the Wairarapa Standard does not add a single word to soften the feeling of alarm which this startling incident, thus nakedly related, is calculated to produce upon the public mind, but leaves it to fexment and px-oduce a fungus growth of rapidly germinating fears. If, after such a mystex-ious warning with respect to “ party leaders,” “ provinees,” axxd “ a packet of poisoxx,” the inhabitants of the provixxce of Auckland in general, and of the village of Wairarapa in particular, can sleep soxxndly in their beds, their nexwes must resemble “ cables of perdurable toughness.”