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New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5140, 13 September 1877, Page 2

A great deal of valuable time has been wasted in Parliament during the last week in an attempt to prove to Sir George Grey that he was inconsistent in hia views upon the land question. The result was exactly that which all who knew that honorable gentleman naturally expected. The truth was made patent, but he declined to accept the demonstration. Sir George Grey governed New Zealand for many years with a nominee Legislature, and until the close of his first administration firmly and successfully resisted the establishment of representative institutions in the colony. When he could no longer resist, he went away. In action, so far as his determination to rule personally without interference was concerned, he was remarkably consistent; his words, it is true, were by no means always in accord with his actions ; and in the long course of his administration he acquired a reputation for “inveracity” which has become historical; but that of course was unmerited, and was no t his fault: men would persist in misunderstanding him. His love for mankind, as expressed in words, was always effusive, and the essays on political liberty and, constitutional government which abound in his despatches are models of literary composition in that line. But Governor Grey was unfortunate, always the victim of circumstances over which he had no control, always just going to make concessions of freedom and self-government to the people of both races whom he so loved, but always at the critical moment

arrested by a lion in the path ! With tears he would then deplore his hard fate and beg a little longer time to 'consider. Once he was really very near to a moderate popularisation of the-machinery by which he governed. As an experiment in educating his; people for the enjoyment of a little liberty he graciously permitted them to elect a few representatives who were to have seats with his nominees in the Legislative Council, and he had actually summoned the mixed assembly to meet him at Auckland, when, if we recollect rightly, the great earthquake occurred here. It would appear as if the Governor accepted this convulsion of nature as a solemn warning that he was going too fast in the direction of self-government. The Council did not meet, and he felt it to be at once his duty to his Royal Mistress and to the people she had committed to his charge, to attempt nothing more in that line. He did nothing, in effect, until he went away and left us the provinces. With such antecedents a charge of inconsistency would naturally be most offensive to Sir George Grey, and we venture to say that as an exhibition of high art no more delightful entertainment has been afforded to the House and the galleries than the speech in which on Monday night last he set himself and his honorable friend Mr. Cox right in regard to a misimpression which the latter had received, that there- was any want of consistency between the views which he held as Governor in 1867—when he urged Mr. Cox to go in for 250,000 or 300,000 acres of land in Taupo, and wished for a share in the “spec”—and those views which, as a member of the House of Representatives, he has expressed of late days in regard to the Piako Swamp and the necessity for a land tax in order to burst up large estates. We had occasion to compliment Mr. Reader Wood upon the display of his accomplishments as an orator and actor on a recent occasion, but we are ready to admit that his was a Bartlemy Fair business in contrast with this finished performance of his great leader. We hope that Mr. Cox, who unfortunately could not hear the orator, but who must at least have , been touched by his expression of injured innocence and his deprecatory action—we hope, we say, Mr. Cox is now satisfied that he has been very naughty ; that Governor Grey did not urge him to go in for three hundred thousand acres in Taupo ; that he did want a share in that “spec.”; that the orders to Mr. Locke for the prompt distribution of the “ground bait” amongst the natives were never given, and that the “letters” which are adduced to prove all these things and the connection ot the parties are no more reliable as evidence than the documents found in the “casket” are reliable evidence against Mary Queen of Scots. We are ourselves satisfied that Sir George Grey has not been inconsistent with himself sit all, and if there were a lingering doubt upon our minds it would have been dispelled by the certificate or testimonial given to Governor Grey by the Honorable Colonel Whitmore, which the honorable member for the Thames read to the House of Representatives with so much satisfaction on the occasion in question.