SIR GEORGE GREY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4859, 18 October 1876, Page 2

SIR GEORGE GREY.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW ZEALAND TIMES. Sir;— ln your' report - of a speech delivered by Sir Gv Grey in the- Assembly; on; Friday, 13th inst., is the following i—“SirG. Grey rose and called attention to the despatch forwarded' to the Secretary of-State by the Governor, and which had been laid upon the table of the House the previous evening."-’. i i . He had read It with very great surprise,’as he had not had the slightest knowledge of its'existence,; ‘and he thought he should be able to show in a very short time that such - a' - document should 1 never have been written and sent Home. . . There was only one channel through which com-

.muni cat ion to her Majesty could be [sent, and that channel was used to blacken the character of individuals. ... . Sir 6. Grey proceeded to say the hon,. the Premier had ever since the beginning of’the session shown a determination to destroy him, and he now stood before the House pleading for his honor, perhaps for his life. . . ' Why had he not had an opportunity of replying before he was damned in the eyes of people at Home? He had been kept in ignorance of the slanders being circulated against him. . . . He asked the House what redress there was for people placed in the position he was placed in ? —where were they to fly for refuge?—what hope was there for anybody ?” After perusing the Marquis of Normanby’s despatch to the Secretary of State, with enclosures, and the above extracts from Sir G. Grey’s speech, I. felt forcibly reminded of a story that was told to me when a little boy in church. With your kind permission, I will give a portion of the story :—“And Samuel said to Agag, as thy sword has rendered women childless, so shall thy mother become childless among women, and Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord.” The impression left upon my mind at the time was that Agag thought it “ hard lines ” being “hewn in pieces,” as, if I recollect the story aright, it was stated that he had been overheard to exclaim, “Surelythe bitterness of death is passed.” He had to die for all that; and all that was left to me, a little boy, was indulgence in the juvenile hope that in his last moments he had been led to repent him of his own gratuitous acts of wholesale cruelty in the past time to others—some of them, may be, as peaceable, as loyal,. andj as true particles of the “humanrace”.as himself.—l am&c., Thomas 0. Williams. Taita, October 16. ' P.S.-—I" pray your readers to bear in inind that Sir George Grey was not addressing the House upon the subject of his own once famous “blood and treasure” despatch.—T.C.W.