Untitled

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5368, 11 June 1878, Page 2

The letter of our Northern correspondent, Quin Nunc, has been a long time on its way to us. N evertheless, as the utterance of the “ poor, man’s ” friend and the protector of Mr George Jones and of his friends are stereotyped, the sharp criticism of the writer upon the “ rot and “bosh” of Sir George Grey’s postsessional speeches will net be ■ without interest. -The difference between.manhood suffrage with one vote, and a property qualification, with the possibility of seventy-one votes for .the rich elector, is not wider than the difference between the promise and the porformanco-in regard to the circulation of the public Bills before their introduction to Parliament, which our. correspondent notes. All the proceedings of the Government ought, according to Sir George Grey, to be as open as the day; every man had a natural right to know what transpired even in the Executive Council Chamber, where' members gander advice to the

Representative of the Crown ; and a daily bulletin was therefore to be printed and published, showing how the servants of the people did or left undone the work of the public. But above all, and more important than all, was the placing the Bills intended to be introduced by the Government in the hands of the people before the meeting of Parliament, in order that even before their representatives were consulted, every man of the people in public meeting might have an opportunity of voting whether he would like a certain law to be made or not. The “ extra- “ ordinary enthusiasm ” evoked months ago by these imaginative measures, or promises of measures, was, at least, a little premature. Not one of these promises has been fulfilled, or was intended to be fulfilled. The secrecy of the “Ten,” or of the Council of the Inquisition, is not more rigid than that of the present Government. There is a reign of terror in the public offices, and the trembling civil servants avoid the “ man iu the street” as a leper, lest they should be suspected of disclosing secrets to that omniscient individual, and be punished, on suspicion, by summary dismissal. The official bulletin of daily transactions has not been published. When meetings with natives are arranged, only the reporters of the Auckland papers, both of which, for cogent present reasons, can be depended on, are allowed to be present. Only a day or two ago, when news of the successful floating of the loan in London, by the agency of Sir Julius Yogel, was received, news in which every individual in this colony has an interest and a right —instead of communicating the cheering intelligence at once by means of the Press Agency throughout the colony, it was published, apparently for the special advantage of that journal—in the Ministers’ own newspaper, and not elsewhere. Not a single Bill of the many important measures embodying the policy of the present Government is as yet in the hands of the people, or is likely to be. Indeed, Ministers announced semi-officially recently that the near approach of the session, and the pressure of business, rendered the circulation of the Bills impossible. We have Mr. Donald Reid’s authority for saying that the Premier has a happy faculty of being able to be “sick,” at critical periods, when a masterly inactivity offers the means of escape from a calculated predicament. No doubt the approach of the session, and the pressure of business, would be decent excuses for the postponing of certain things, if it could be forgotten, that instead of attending to the business of their respective departments, Ministers have been stumping the country for party purposes, at the public expense, and studiously exposing such extreme antagonism of opinion amongst themselves upon cardinal points of policy as would be sufficient’to “ burst up ” any Cabinet which had regard to the ordinary rules, or was held together by the ordinary ties of Constitutional Government. It is owing, we presume, to the fact that the freedom of the Press in Auckland is all on one side that we are indebted for our correspondent’s favor. We shall always be ready to place our columns at the disposal of our friends in the North, for the ventilation of public questions, the fair and free discussion of which the friends of the people at present in office are able there to prevent orsuppress. Itisa remarkable sign of the times that a writer such as our correspondent should be forced to come to Wellington to obtain expression for his opinions on public’ questions, the local newspapers being gagged by Government advertisements. We quote from the “ New Zealand Herald” a portion of that report of the Premier’s speech at Hamilton which forms the text for our commentary, and to which a reference is made in the letter of our correspondent: “Sir G. Grey, who on rising was “ greeted with loud and continued ap- “ plause, said they were all aware that “ through New Zealand there had been “avery great difficulty experienced by “ its inhabitants in ascertaining what the “ Government intended to do in the “ country. Wellington was at a great “ distance from the North, and when the “ Assembly met there were no reports of ‘ ‘ its proceedings until ‘ Hansard’ was “ published, which was not until, at least, “ a week or ton days subsequent to any “ debate, and then it did not reach the “ people here for some time. The result “ had been that laws had hitherto been “made in New Zealand without the “ people having had the least knowledge “ of the nature of those laws until after “ they had became the law of the land. “ He believed that in many cases, if the “ population of New Zealand had been “ at all aware of the nature of the laws “ that were about to be made, they would “ have risen almost as one man, held “ public meetings, and protested against “ laws which it was proposed to enact, “ and in fact prevented many of an ob- “ noxious character being made at all. “ Well, the course the Government tried “ recently had been this, to let the in- “ habitants of every part of New Zea- “ land know exactly the nature of the “ laws, they intended to submit to the “ Legislature, „to explain the reasons “ which induced them to propose such “ laws and thus enable the people of New “ Zealand, from end to end, to express “ opinions on what the Government was “ about to do. (Cheers.) That had “ been so fully carried out that almost “ every man in Now Zealand had had an “ opportunity in public meetings of vot- “ ing whether he would like a certain “ law to be made or not. The result of “ that had been that an extraordinary “ enthusiasm had been evoked through- “ out the country. The population were “ attending much more to politics than “ they had done hitherto. They under- “ stood public questions better than they “ had previously any opportunity of do- ‘ ‘ ing. He thought the result would be “ satisfactory to the whole of New Zea- “ land, and it would be established as a “precedent, which must be adhered to “for the future ; and he believed that “ henceforth it would bo impossible for “ any Government to impose laws upon “ New Zealand without the inhabitants “ first of all insisting upon knowing what “ those laws were to be.”