SIR GEORGE GREY AT CHRISTCHURCH.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5759, 13 September 1879, Page 3

SIR GEORGE GREY AT CHRISTCHURCH.

(From the Prest.) Sir George Grey’s speech to the Christchurch electors oil Tuesday night, like the Governor’s speech, was plainly that of a man who sees that he had lost all chance of longer holding his power by constitutional means, and is casting about for some artifice or some apology for refusing to give up his darling power at the bidding of the people’s representatives. Men of his stamp, when once they become known, are often more easily understood than men of a more straightforward disposition, and each of their devices is often as conspicuous as the body of the head-hidden ostrich. We believe Sir George would get power honestly if he could, but power he must have. He would rule by the undoubted authority of Parliament if he could gat a Parliament entirely to his mind and honestly under his control. But failing that, he is now preparing his worshippers to believe that he would be doing quite right to consider himself the true represeutative of the New Zealand people, and as such entitled to treat the other eightyseven members of the House—or any number of them that may'resist his will—as, for various reasons, mere spurious representatives, who may be set aside in any way that he may find most convenient. With some little circumlocution, he told his hearers last night that his great reason for seeking the support of a great city like Christchurch was that he wished to prove that the people of New Zealand believed in him, and as long as they did that it was little matter to him that, their representatives had no confidence in him, especially as those representatives were sure to get corrupted and contaminated by their intercourse with the members of tb' Upper House. Nothing is more clear now tnan that the Premier will not do what he intimated, he might do oh the 4th of August last, but which no one who knows Sir George Grey would for a moment believe, although • so plausibly expressed in these words :—“lf the elections go adversely to myself and my colleagues we shall probably deem it our duty not to meet the House, but shall, immediately the constituencies have defied ared'themselves, tender our resignation, so that those whd come into office may have some time to prepare: their measures.” This was said when ha believed the elections were not going against him. , Like his reference to Mr. Weld's chivalrous . conduct in resigning the moment he failed to command a good working majority, it was intended for, the guidance of any other Ministry but his own. If anything were needed to assure us that Sir George Grey will resign power as long as he can find even the most unconstitutional subterfuge for clinging to it, his speech last night would be conclusive. W* may expect that by that course he will waste the coming session, and again prevent the honest Liberals from passing the measures which he tells us are the great foundation from which all the other unheard of blessings are to flow. No one who listened to the speech last night would find it easy to believe that the speaker was the one man in New Zealand to whom we are indebted for the fact that the franchise is not extended to every resident in New Zealand—that the man who stood in the rink calling himself the champion of the people's rights against some imaginary enemies prepared to keep them in a state of serfdom, was,the one man who withheld the Electoral Bill of 1878 from the people of New Zealand, after their representatives had passed it by a majority of more than thirty to one. No one would believe that he was the Premier who considered triennial Parliaments of so little consequence that he last year allowed the Bill to be lost rather than make it a Ministerial quest! in, and this year has appointed, as the latest addition to his Ministry, a gentleman who has always consistently spoken and voted against it. Will it be believed that he had sat for a whole session , at the head of a good working majority in the New Zealand Parliament, and turned a deaf ear to demands from all sides of the House for a re-distribution of seats on the basis of populatien, and with all his great opportunities has never yet placed a single liberal measure on the New Zealand Statute Book. No man ever talked so much of liberal measures. No man ever had such opportunities of making them law, and yet no m'au could ever point to less actual performance. We are not amongst those who believe that the three measures he has deprived us of in the face of all the efforts of our representatives to give them to us would immediately bring about the millenial state which Sir George described last night as one in which “no complaints would be heard, because everyone would have everything he desired.” But whatever importance may be attached to them, the last man that we should expect to get them from is the one who has had every opportunity to procure them for us, and has obstinately refused to do so. Nor do we believe that every man is going to get his comfortable little farm to hereafter divide amongst his blooming daughters and thriving sons from a Premier who has bad the disposal of such valuable railway reserves and other land of a most suitable character for offering on deferred payments, and yet has preferred to sell them to speculators for cash. Nothing could sound more zealous than the expressions the Premier used last night about the continuance of our great Northern Railway, and yet there is the great fact that no effort made by the Canterbury members, especially Messrs. Richardson and Bowen, could induce the Grey Government to spend the money on that line that the Parliament voted for it, whilst money was freely spent without authority on lines in the North and South- If there were auy good reason to be given why, in every case, Sir George Grey’s actions have always belied his words, no one doubts that he was well able to give it, and he would certainly have been better employed in doing so last

night than in giving us the history of France, Holland, Ireland and Scotland. Divested of all mvstincations. Sir George Grey says to the electors of Christchurch, “Elect the man who stamped out your extended suffrage last year, who dropped your Triennial Parliaments Bill, and who voted with all his followers against a redistribution of seats, and you will get all three Liberal measures in a few weeks. Vote for the men who carried residential suffrage to the extent of tht-ir power, who tried their best to give you triennial Parliaments, who loudly demanded a redistribution of seats, and against whom you will find the record of no broken promises, and all these boons will be postponed for the next five years. Vote for the Premier, who has long had an opportunity to give each oue of you a farm on deferred payments, but has never taken the trouble to do so, and you will soon ’have everything you desire,’ Vote for the men who placed that power in his hands in the honest belief that it would be exercised, and you may expect to continue the landless fathers of landless sons and daughters. Vote for the man who has promised you so much and given you less than nothiug, and reject the men who have promised no impossibility, but who have honestly served you on every opportunity, and especially saved you from the greater part of the Premier’s intended plunder.”