THE CABINET AND THE PRESS IN NEW ZEALAND.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5632, 18 April 1879, Page 3

THE CABINET AND THE PRESS IN NEW ZEALAND.

(From the Australasian.) Recent differences in the New Zealand Cabinet have drawn public attention to the unscrupulous devices that Ministry is resorting to in its scheme of what Mr. Higinbotham would call “ nobbling” the Press. Our own Government by its policy of violence and terrorism against Opposition papers and whol'esale bribery of subservient journals with the public funds has gone to pretty good lengths.in this direction, but Sir George Grey’s Cabinet has up to this point left Mr. Berry and even Sir Bryan O’Loghlen far behind. It has given Government advertisements to a journal almost wholly owned by the Ministers themselves, whilst withholding them from other Wellington papers of far greater influence ’ and circulation. . The .advertising fund has indeed been systematically used throughout the country as a means of rewarding the journals which have given support to the Government through thick and thin. ' Sir George Grey has not yet descended to the publication of impudent slanders against a newspaper in the 06verriment Gazette, but ; we may fairly assume that, it is rather that veteran politician’s sense of personal dignity than his spirit of moderation which has saved him from: resorting, to such a course. But in other respects the Grey Ministry has shown great fertility of ooiioep-, tionand audacity of execution in thefuthfirance of its plan of corrupting the Press by buying support with hard cash from the public treasury. The device for granting special telegraphic privileges tq certain, favored, and, of course, Greyite journals, we have before animadverted upon. The latest development of this policy of corruption is the rewarding individual journalistic zeal by public appointments. Thus Mr. Reid, who edited one joiirnal of ecstatic Greyite views, is pensioned off by-am appointment of - £6OO a year as an immigration agent, and more recently Mr. Luckie, another editor of the same devotional tendencies, .about whom the late split occurred in the Cabinet, has been provided for in an analogous way. The means of the Victorian and the New. Zealand “ Liberals ” are different, but their end is the same. That is to crush all independent and opposing journalism, and to reward that on 1 their own side by unscrupulous donations from'the public purse. We know the feeling -entertained in- communities of high feeling and self-respect towards a “ reptile Press,’’ so fostered and so fed, and doubtless in time this feeling will, however tardily, show itself even: in the ranks of Southern “Liberalism,” although'this holds tho same relation to true ■Liberalism that a spurious sovereign does to a genuine one. ■