The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY.) SATURDAY, JUNE 23, 1878.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5378, 22 June 1878, Page 2

The New Zealand Times (PUBLISHED DAILY.) SATURDAY, JUNE 23, 1878.

A General Government “Gazette” was issued late last evening, which, as having special interest, we have reprinted in extenso. It contains four despatches from his Excellency the Governor to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and the replies to these despatches respectively. It also contains memoranda which have passed between the Governor and the Premier, Sir George Grey, arising apparently out of the recommendation made by his Excellency in the usual course that these despatches should be laid before Parliament, Students of our Blue-books know that in every Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives and of the Legislative Council such despatches are to be found : they are always expected by members of the Legislature to be presented to Parliament, and Ministers have always regarded it as part of their duty to see that those expectations were satisfied. Neither on the part of the Representative.of the Crown, nor on the part of his Responsible Advisers in this colony, has any difficulty as a rule been found in effecting this arrangement ; nor, until the present time, has any disagreement occurred, that wo can remember, between the Governors and Ministers in regard to this special procedure. If any such disagreement had

occurred it would moat probably be found to have taken place during the period of Sir George Grey’s second term of office, after the Constitution Act had been in force for some time, and when the system of Ministerial responsibility had been established in 'the Government of the colony and it is there that the record of it should bo sought. The despatches, four in number, relate respectively to the famous breach of the privilege of the House alleged to have been committed by hisExcollency the Governor in allowing it to be made known, upon the advice of the Premier, that ho was aware that a vote of want of confidence in the Government was then pending ; to the demand of the Premier for a dissolution of Parliament without supply having been first obtained; to the refusal to receive the proposed visit of Sir William Jkrvois; and to the attempt to obtain the Governor’s veto to the Land Bill. Upon all these points it will give general satisfaction to find that Lord Carnarvon and his successor in the office of Secretary of State for the Colonies, Sir Michael Hicks-Bbach, approve and sustain the views and the action of the Governor.

The really remarkable document of the series now published is Sir George Grey’s memorandum of the Bth June. This is an essay upon the thesis that the Secretary of State has no right to interfere in the affairs of the colony; and that the Governor should obey the orders of his Prime Minister and have no will of his own. The answer of the Governor to these absurdities is complete and crushing; it deserves careful consideration by all the people of this colony. His Excellency reminds Sir George Grey that he has himself been in several colonies the Representative of the Crown and subordinate to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and that, when he had been somewhat peremptorily relieved from duty, and had become a member of the House of Representatives and leader of the Opposition, he had himself more than once, by letter and by telegram, in regard to the abolition of the provinces, invoked the kind of interference which he now denounces. His absurd telegrams to Lord Carnarvon about the intended bombardment of Auckland—entirely a fiction of his own—will be forgotten only when men cease to laugh at his celebrated Wairarapa letter. There is an affected unconsciousness of all his own official antecedents in the style of this memorandum that is almost sublime in its impudence. There was a Governor Grey in 186 d who constantly invoked the interference of the Secretary of State in the administration of the internal affairs of this colony, and who did not allow himself to be either guided or governed by his Responsible Ministers. Sir George Grey’s memory is not good ; but the records of the memorandummiad are enshrined in the Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives for the year 1864, The lateness of the hour at which the “Gazette” came into our hands precludes us from such comment as we should have desired to make upon these papers ; but we shall take an early opportunity of showing how the views of Governor Grey in 1864 differed from the views of Sir George Grey, Prime Minister, in 1878, upon the very points upon which he has just been lecturing her Majesty’s Representative.