OPINION ON SIR G. GREY.

Patea Mail, Volume IV, Issue 317, 1 May 1878, Page 4

OPINION ON SIR G. GREY.

Sir. George Grey has condescended to explain the arbitrary course he adopted, of wilfully delaying the publication of a despatch trorn the Colonial Office intimating that the Queen had been pleased to grant the title of “honourable” to two retired judges. The Premier was guided by the principle which he has somewhere discovered, that “no new rank could be created in New Zealand withonr the consent ol the Legislature of the country.” His speech freely employed such terms as “a most contemptible rank,” “a bastard aristocracy,” and similar phrases with which democrats are in the habit of 'designating all distinctions save their own. The address, indeed, exhibited a good deal of that hatred of distinction won by personal merit which is the essential characteristic of the sham democrat, whose democracy is only another name for the feelings of social jealousy ami envy.. We get plenty of this kind of thing from, many of our “ Libera!” politicians, and the fact that it always succeeds in drawing down the uproarious applause of the mob does not prevent it from being radically opposed to the essential principles of democracy in its truest sense. We have seen in Victoria how the same speakers, ■ and the same party and press, who consider it the deepest disgrace for a man bearing honor and distinctions to have made his own way from a humble beginning, who lavish on such men abuse as members of a “ shoddy aristocracy,” and who point with exultation to the fact that a present knight began life as a bullock-driver or a greengrocer, can prostrate themselves with abject ilunkeyism at the feet of a man whoso sole chum to prominence consists iu the fact that he is an Irish baronet, the third wearer of the title, rapturously rave about the “ genuine 'nobleman,” and the “good old blood,” and point with triumph to the circumstance that the only “ real live baronet in the colony” is on their side.—i?«-trala-iiaru