SIR BRYAN O'LOGHLEN AND SIR GEORGE GREY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5034, 2 May 1878, Page 3

SIR BRYAN O'LOGHLEN AND SIR GEORGE GREY.

(From the Australasian, April 13.) Nothing so much pleases colonial democrats as to tell them that they are slaves, abject victims of a grinding tyranny which tramples their lives and liberties in the .dust., Among the unmitigated rubbish and imbecile bunkum which Sir Bryan O’lioghlen has by the bounty of nature been enabled to. supply so liberally to the electors of West Melbourne nothing has been more successful than this. His hearers know that ityis untrue, and that he knows it to be untrue. They know that they return a majority to. Parliament, make Ministries, shape legislation, bring luxurious civil servants to rain and’beggary, go'to the meeting of the opposite candidate, and behave like unreasoning do just what they like, and use and abuse all the liberties which men-can. possess. : But, knowing all this, they like some unscrupulous charlatan to get up and tell thena . than. they are slaves to an oppression-worse that that, of the Czar of Russia. . Sir George Grey,'with his skill in playing on-.popular passion, and with his keen sympathy with the envy and animosity and jealousy ,of’ the unreasoning lower orders, has seen the advantage of this sort of talk, and of course let no scruple deter him from adopting it. He told a public meeting the other .day that **in-so far as the constitution of our country had. not; been shattered by recent acts, we had the skeleton of a constitution 1 the freest on the face of the earth. . . . Ne other part of the British Empire has such liberty ; but now through recent - legislation . all this . has. been handed over-to the Secretary of State.”- It is impossible to suppose that Sir George Grey is unaware that when he is talking .n this strain he is - foisting monstrous, impudent impostures on the credulity of his hearers. There is no more foundation for such assertions than for the attempt be lately attributed to English statesmen to’tax..the colonies to support the English fleet,- or for the plot between the Governor and the Com-r modofe to bombard the city of Auckland, or for the conspiracy between-Sir George Bowen and the Secretary of State to poison prominent colonial politicians out of the way, or for the leading English newspapers being_ bought up by the Atkinson Government to ridicule a.nd oppose Sir George Grey. He all Ibis, but he knows also that the people like these declarations and are quite indifferent as to the truth of them, and as Sir George is equally indifferent, his supply of wild, eccentric fiction is in proportion to their demand.