SIR GEORGE GREY AND THE CONSTITUTION.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume III, Issue 223, 18 November 1874, Page 2

SIR GEORGE GREY AND THE CONSTITUTION.

The following appeared in a late number of the New Zealand Times ou the subject of Provincial Abolition. It is from the pen of an able writer and will be read with much interest: — (To the Editoi* of the New Zealand Times.') Sir, —It appears to me that we are rapidly approaching a most important crisis in the political existence of this colony, a period of organic transition. These conditions of life in all living organisms, whether natural bodies or political bodies, are, above all other, critical and dangerous, and upon the way in which the given organised body, natural or political, gets through that stage, depends, in great degree, its future life for weal or for woe. We shall, without doubt, need every gleam of light which can from any side be brought in upon our path, and every honest word temperately spoken by the humblest citizen, that citizen may, in my opinion, without the least presump tion, fitly contribute to the general stock on such an occasion as this. All the more is this so when such a figure as that of Sir George Grey, with the laurels of administrative triumphs won iu the past, resting on his brow, steps forth once more into the. political arena, and lends to either side the prestige of his name, and the deservedly weighty authority of his public character. Will you allow me some space to contribute my mite to the discussion of this momentous public question in the shape of some criticisms on the document which appears with the sanction of Sir George Grey’s name ? That document contains a number of doctrines and statements which appear to me in no ordinary degree startling and dangerous; so much, indeed did I feel this to be the case that, until the printed text of his petition readied here, I hesitated to believe Sir George had been correctly reported by the telegraph. As these doctrines come forth under the sanction of so great a name, it will be necessary for me to indulge at some length in quotations of authorities, but for the reasons above stated, these, if apposite, cannot possibly be, at the present time, thrown idly away. The propositions, implicit or express, which on analysis I gather from the man-i' festo, appear to be the following :— 1. The Constitution Act establishes four estates, and the Governor is bound by law to protect them, and the state of things in this respect so fixed by the Act, is the only right state for the future.

2. The Governor is legally responsible for some acts to the General Assembly and for some other acts to the Provincial Governments, and is not justified in listening to advice of the Assembly to abolish the provinces. 3. The people of New Zealand have in the past elected the House of Representatives to exercise powers given them by the Constitution Act, and to exercise any other powers would be ultra vires ; and the electors could not, even on an appeal to them, confer any other powers. 4. The power of electing Superintendents is a great political privilege, and a worthy object of local ambition. 5. The success in this colony and the general political value of the Federal system. 6. The specific advantage of the provincial system over the Assembly in securing efficient control of money expenditure, and in guarding against unjust and partial alienation of public lands. 7. Its general Advantages in passing local laws, in the political education of the people, and in training statesmen. 8 If the provincial system be abolished the petitioner and his fellow-colonists would be represented in only one branch of the Legislature, and would be obliged to live under a Constitution repugnant to that of Great Britain, and the change proposed would be out of harmony with the structure and historical development of that Constitution.

9. If that change be made it will necessitate a reform of the nominee branch of the Legislature.

10. For the Imperial Parliament to pass an Act giving the Assembly power to abolish the provinces would be “ unnecessary interference with local questions of an important colony,” and the Governor is bound by his duty to summon the Assembly to warn the English Parliament. 11. There is no historical instance of the abolition of an independent Legislature without its own consent, and the British Parliament should not do this “ without the consent of the people of the provinces previously obtained in a lawful and constitutional manner.”

12. There is at present no person legally or constitutionally competent to negotiate with the English Government on the abolition of the provinces, and such negotiation at present is an illegal and unconstitutional act. 13. The recent conferring of honors on two of our public men is illegal and unconstitutional.

Some of these propositions are simply matters of opinion open to the practical judgment, founded on experience, of those who have watched the working of provincialism in this colony ; withone proposition at least I fully agree ; one other proposition seems to me no more than a truism covering a fallacy ; but by far the larger number of these statements of doctrine I must confess I have read with surprise, amounting to astonishment. It will contribute both to brevity and clearness if we group together several of those propositions for simultaneous investigation. Heads Nos. 1 and 8 are mutually dependent, and the consideration of them will give us an historical standpoint. We are told that the “estates” established by the Constitution Act. ought to be held sacred, and that to inteifere with or abolish them would be a course out of harmony.with English constitutional growth—repugnant, in fact, to both its statics or laws of equilibrium and its dynamics or laws of progress —and that such procedure will leave the colonists imperfectly represented. With all respect I am constrained to say that in my mind a more unfortunate statement never was made, and clothed too in a jargon quite unworthy of Sir G. Grey. Let us see. Here I have before me the very latest publication of the very highest constitutional authority in England, I mean Professor Stubbs of Oxford.

“ The great characteristic of the English constitutional system —the principle of its growth, the secret of its construction—is the continuous development of representative institutions from the firstelementary stage in which they are employed for local purposes, and in the simplest form, to that in which the National Parliament appears as the concentration of all local and provincial machinery, the depository of the collective powers of the three estates of the realm. . . The period is one of amalgamation, of consolidation, of continuous growing together and new development, which distinguishes the process of organic life from that of mere mechanic contrivance, internal law from external order. . . The new consolidating process is one of organism, not of mere mechanism: the child’s puzzle, the perfect chronometer, the living creature, symbolise three kinds or stages of creative skill, order, organisation, law ; the point that our history reaches at the date of Magna Charta may be fixed as the transition from the second to the third stage.”—“ Stubbs’ Constitutional History,” vol. I, 1874. To this most lucid, exposition of the principle of English constitutional growth, let me add that of one whom I shall take the liberty of calling the first constitutional authority in the colonies—l mean Professor Hearn, of the University of Melbourne:—“ if it be asked what is the form under which the difference of our modern and of our ancient Consitution presents itself, the answer must be sought in the laws which regulate organic development. The changes which have taken place in our Constitution are the results of the natural process of evolution. . . . Each organ in the matured system has its own function. Each function finds its appropriate organ. It is a spontaneous process of evolution in which a homogeneous and simple body is, by a series of differentiations and integrations, transmuted into a heterogeneous and complex body. Tiie efficacy of the system and the complexity of ils organisation proceed simultaneously since their relation is one of cause and effect.” (Government of England, p. 32.) All change, therefore, that has taken place in the course of the history of England, was a change in obedience to the law of organic development or evolution, which is, in fact, the law of growth of all living things whatever; and, just according to the degree in which they obey it, is their place fixed higher up or lower down in the scale of organised life. We may as well set down here the definition of this law given by one of the greatest, perhaps the very greatest, of living philosophical thinkers, and its best exponent, Mr. Herbert Spencer:—“Evolution,” says he “ *s a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, through con-tinuous-differentiations and integrations.” This law is true alike in the political

and the natural world, and nothing is more startling than the way in which history testifies to its truth both in the instances when nations were able to obey, and those when they unluckily disregarded its behests. England is what she is, just because atthe various crises of her national life, she had the singular happiness to be able to adapt her external constitutional forms to the expanding needs of her inward life —to integrate when integration and consolidation were essential to life and health, to differentiate when that was the thing needful, to leave to the National Government that which was truly general and national, and to leave to the local administrative bodies what was truly and strictly local. Thus the many little independent Teutonic settlements on the soil of Britain gradually, in obedience tothisgreatlaw, were integrated into the three great kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex. Then, after a transitional and indefinite period of hegemony, alternating among the three, they finally settled down under the definite supremacy of Wessex, yet still leaving the machinery of local life vigorous on the soil. Then come the Norman, with his powerful, heavy, remorseless, administrative hand, crushing down and consolidating into compact national unity the whole mass. And at length the ruler—the “Rex Anglorum,” the chief of tribes, who knew no Engla-land, because, in that sense, there was no England to know—appears as the king of that territorial, political, national totality of interests, feelings, and life which we call England.

The usual form taken by a national or provincial assembly in the middle ages was that of an assembly of estates. In England, at the time of Magna Charta, the political constituents of the nation, “ the three estates of the realm,” says Stubbs, “ were the clergy, the baronage, and the commons.” At that time the clergy were a most powerful estate, and had an Assembly of their own, but what has become of them as an estate of the realm? The truth is that all such language is now a mere jargon, the remnant of forms that once had a meaning and a counterpart in the national life, are now meaningless and misleading, Here is what the great author of the “ Norman Conquest,” Mr. Freeman, says on that point:—“ For centuries.-back there has been no estate of the clergy. Men constantly use the words ‘ Three Estates ’ as if they meant the three elements among winch the legislative power is divided. King, Lords, and Commons. But an estate means a a class or order, or rank of men like the Lords, the Clergy, or the Commons. The King is not an estate, because there is no class or order of Kings, the King being one person alone by himself.’ The proper phrase is the King and the-'three estates of the realm. But in England I have shown that the phrase is meaningless." The fact is that this once powerful estate (the clergy), thoqgh down to 1664 they continued to tax themselves in convocation, had long before that time partially, and since that time have completely, sunk into the representative system. Did any one ever imagine that any of our great leading Statutes at the great cardinal constitutional epochs fixed the form of the Constitution for good, or even that it could possibly do so ? Did Magna Charta do it ? Did the petition of Rights do it? Did the Bill of Rights do it? Did the Reform Bill do it ?. The Constitution was not made—by Statute or anything else—it grew. Of it may be said, as Cicero said to the Roman Empire:— “ Nec temporis unius, nee hominis esse constitutionem reipubliea." No one man made it—no Statute, made it, for it was part of the common law—no one time made it, for it was and is pliable and elastic to the needs of all time.

It is quite hopeless to attempt to reduce to a final statutory form the Constitution of any free state that really lives and develops. It is not true to say or to imply that our Constitution becomes repugnant to that of England if it change its form to meet the changing and developing life of the eolony. It is no more unjust or unconstitutional that the original elements of our Legislature (for that is the correct term, not estates) should be readjusted, and absorbed into the national representation, than it was in England. The question for the colony is this— Are we to continue a miserable aggregation of little political circumscriptions, hotbeds of unreasonable and unmeaning jealousies and prejudice, centres of political disintegration tearing out the bowels of the land ; or are we, under the influence of our increasing internal communication and growing intelligence, giving full scope to the healthful instincts of our race, to coalesce into one organic whole, interpenetrated with the sentiments of national unity, and pervaded with the consciousness of national identity? Which is it to be.

I shall have to trouble you again, and now have the honor to be, &c., John H. Shiw, L.L.B.