SIR A. GORDON AND NATIVE POLICY-

Patea Mail, 14 June 1882, Page 4

SIR A. GORDON AND NATIVE POLICY-

The Timaru Herald in an article on “ Sir George Grey and the Native Policy,” says “ Sir Arthur Gordon is going away, and Sir George Grey 8 enthusiastic praise of the native policy of the Government, —which of course is equivalent to the severest censure on Sir Arthur Gordon’s conduct in obstructing that p 0 lj C y_ w ill just put the climax on poor Sir Arthur’s dismal failure as Governor of New Zealand. So long as his ideas on native affairs were the ideas of a lecognised authority like Sir George Grey, there was something to be said for the attitude which he has so obstinately maintained in antagonism to Mr Bryce. He would have been able with perfect justice to tell the Colonial Office that through the majority of the European population sided with the Ministry, yet Sir George Grey and an important political section In the country fully approved of the line he has taken, and were scandalised by the high-handed, cruel, tyrannical, blood-thirsty doings of the colonial Ministers. In this case, Sir Aithui Gordon would have been able to put a very good face on the thing, and would at all events have secured the sympathy and approval of that section at Home who make it their business to champion the cause of colored races, whether they need any championship or not. Just when he is on the point of departure, with this halo of misdirected philanthropy around him, however, Sir George Grey has taken a step which puts Sir Arthur Gordon into an extremely awkward position. Sir George has openly declared in his place in Parliament that the Ministry have been quite right in their dealings with the natives, and that their conduct has been marked by the loftiest humanity, and the most scrupulous regard for the rights and interests committed to their charge. He has expressed his unqualified approval of everjdhing Mr Bryce had done, and said it reflected no discredit on the colony and cast no slur on its reputation. He might jnst as well have said in plain words that Sir Arthur Gordon was an ignorant blunderer, blinded by prejudice and carried away by his hobby, and that his dispatches to the Secretary of State about his Ministers and about native affairs, were a pack of rubbish which any sane man ought to be ashamed of. In short, Sir George Grey has completely stripped Sir Arthur Gordon of every shred of reputation as a champion of oppressed races, by showing that the Ministers, instead of being the ruthless tyrants that Sir Arthur Gordon represents them, were in reality the true friends of the natives and inspired in all their actions by the purest sentiment of philantropy. Coming from anybody else, such a testimony would have been neither here nor there to Sir Arthur Gordon. But coming from Sir George Grey, his own chosen confidant and counsellor, with whom he has hitherto been absolutely of one mind on native questions, it is about as damaging as anything could possibly be.”