SIR GEORGE GREY ON CONSTITUTIONALISM.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume III, Issue 264, 14 April 1875, Page 2

SIR GEORGE GREY ON CONSTITUTIONALISM.

(From the Daily Southern Cross.) Continued from our last. Great Britain entrusted to me some thirty years ago a sum of £lO,OOO, ordering me with that £lO,OOO to purchase the best blocks of land that I could, and that after selling them to apply parts of the proceeds to immigration purposes, part to purposes of public works, and to reserve at least the sum that I had paid in purchase of the blocks of land and. to re-invest that, and to go on always doing this. And under these, .conditions with; the Home Government I purchased almost the whole of the Middle Island, great tracts of land in the Province of Hawke’s Bay. great tracts of land in the Province of Wellington, and I began to buy some tracts of land here with the proceeds realised from the sale of other lands, and, I believe, that under this system the whole of the Northjlsland, or a great part of it, would by this time have been acquired. Not only that, but under the. system of Immigration I believe that every farmer in the colony would have been four or five times as well off as now. (Cheers). I believe that from the stoppage of that system a large number of families have sunk in the social scale, and in such a way that it will take them several generations to retrieve the position they ought fairly to be in, and I believe that the miseries entailed upon out settlers from immigration not being carried on, from roads not being made, from other lands not being acquired iu the vicinity, can never be told. That is my impression on the subject, but recollect it was an Act of Parliament again that enabled this to be done. They had to apply to the Ministry at Home to enable that to be done. It was forbidden by the Constitution, and I believe if full notice had been given to the Colony hero, and the thing had been thoroughly discussed, such an Act could never have taken place at all. What brought me out from retirement was to a great extent that question. (Cheers.) What I find you were told was this, (and I believe from this very platform) “ we are going to sweep away your Provincial Institutions.” Mind you are not to do it yourselves; it is to be done by people at the other end of the country, who know nothing at all about you, but they are going to do it and the reason is that we cannot support our institutions, the gaols, -lunatic asylums and things of that kind. In Canterbury ' and Otago they are in the most admirable order. They are not in good order now, so we must sweep them away, and we intend to do, but we will put them in good order for you. We will provide life, which means that you will be taxed for the purpose. You think that other people will pay for your lunatics here, whereas you ought almost to be shut up yourselves, if you believe so. (Laughter and cheers.) However,, you were told that would be the case: and then you were informed that any one who called in question the Compact of 1856 would be a dishonest man, and that it would be a dishonest transaction to endeavor to do so. As to what I thought to myself, there shall be one dishonest man 1 (Laughter and cheers.) If one here will stand forward and speak, if they are cowed by expressions of this kind, falling from such very high authority, at least I will come out first, and I will speak if anybody will stand by me afterwards. (Cheers.) That was the first thought I had, and, to my mind, the speech that ought to have been made was to this effect: —Electors of City East, as I believe they were, —I believe your institutions here are in a very bad state —your lunatic asylum and gaol. I believe that was really said. I do not say they were, but I only follow out the line of reasoning. Now the institutions of Canterbury and Otago are in a most excellent state. This is quite true, as I can testify from my own knowledge. Well, what is clear is this, that under local supervision, by local authorities institutions of this kind are bought to the highest conditions, if the authorities have funds. That is what I should have stated if I had been making a speech. Here is a clear proof that such is the case. It is very admirable to see that they have spent those funds on such worthy objects. It is quite certain that none of the local authorities there have drawn great salaries for themselves, and great allowances, but have conducted everything on a parsimonious and becoming scale. They have-spent their funds in a noble and proper way. This shows what comes of trusting local authorities.with proper funds. It show’s what local supervision will do. Now I will tell you, electors of City East, what I will do. [f possible, I will obtain for the people of the province of Auckland money too. I think they have been very badly used in the land fund business, and what I will do is this : As I am your representative and Premier of the Colony—mind I am still speaking for Mr. Vogel—l will tell you how I will try to get funds for y’ou. I will appoint all the judges of the Supreme Court a commission, and they shall sit as a Court of Equity, and they shall take evidence and determine, if you suffered any wrong in the matter of the land fund, and what remuneration, if any, you are entitled to, and whatever they award you shall have. (Cheers.) That would appear to me to have been a just way of dealing with a question of this kind, instead of saying that any man was dishonest who called into question the Compact of 1856. I believe still that there may be very great difficulty in getting any portion of the land fund in that way, and I will tell you further, my belief that the £700,000, which is to be set apart for the purpose, you will not get much good from. I hear that it is necessary in order to get any, to buy a great deal of indifferent land, and I believe that the expenses of ac-

quiring that land are enormous, andlthink myself that the fair way, if that was to have been done at all, would have been in conformity with the terms of the Constitution Act, as it was originally passed, to hand over to the Superintendent of the province the £700,000, and letthe inhabitants of the province receive the interest until the land was bought. The province should be allowed to make judicious purchases, instead of the laud being procured by agents all over the country, who received so much per acre on all they could purchase. The interest on the £700,000 would have assisted us most enormously in our troubles, and I believe that a far greater quantity of land would have been obtained than you get now, and of better quality, and at half the price. I still think some change of that kind should be made. These are my opinions on the subject of the land fund, and I hope I have made myself clear regarding them. I will now travel, on to. another point, and one of the greatest possible importance. I will now take the resolution of last session passed by the , Assembly, on the subject of the abolition of the Northern provinces. I believe the first part of the resolution was to th effect that the Northern provinces were to'be done away with. I will not say anything more upon that point at present. The second part of the resolution I think was that an Act was to be passed declaring Wellington the capital and seat of Government of the colony. And this was the most illegal thing I ever heard of in my life, and a most unconstitutional proposal. We have some great Statesmen in the Assembly, but how any Statesman could have fallen into such an error, I cannot conceive. Let me point out the ■ Constitutional question to you ; the Constitutional law of every country says there shall be no declared capital, there shall be no law passed declaring such a thing; because if a law was passed declaring that the Legislature must sit at Wellington, and a mob got possession of Wellington for a time, there could be no legislation at all, and you could not pass a law to put them down. (Laughter and cheers.) If we -went to war with Russia, and tlie enemy got possession of Wellington, we should have to sit down and fold our hands, and make no laws at all. Therefore the Constitution Act says that the General Assembly shall from time to time meet in. such part of the Colony of New Zealand at such place, and at such time as the Governor may by proclamation appoint, And in every successive law amending the Constitution Act that clause has been specially saved. The General Assembly have been told that they cannot interfere with it, and they ought not to be allowed to interfere with it. I don’t know whether I have made myself clear on the subjeet—first of all there is a Constitutional law, and second there .is a positive statute law of the colony and of Great Britain that no interference of that kind is to be made by the General Assembly. Therefore we need not be alarmed upon that subject. Now, I would not attribute evil intentions to anybody ; but I must say it looks to me excessively like —and so like that the thing ought not to have been done—an intention on the part of the Government to buy so many votes by putting that clause into the resolution. Having cleared a way that second point in the resolution, I will now point out what is the kind of object we ought to aim at: I will not go into details, but simply sketch an outline. I would first of all say that the present machinery, in addition to all the defects I have pointed out, as it is now constituted, is an ingenious device to keep us from the Queen and from the people of Great Britain—like these honors that I told you of. It would have been inrpos- , sible for any person desiring to do it to have sat down and devised a scheme more calculated to separate us from our fellow countrymen at home, and in one moment you will see that this is beyond all question. If we want anything done here to bring us into communication with the British nation as a whole, we are compelled first of all to have recourse to the Colonial Minister, who, as I have shown, must be, more or less, from the honours that are given, and other circumstances, all under the- influence of the party in England, under whose power the colonies are now really governed. If we obtain the consent of our own Ministers they have to go to the Governor, and then he has to bring it under the consideration of the Home authorities. I believe that so long as the appointments to the office of Governor, are to a great extent, party appointments, as they are now, it will be very difficult to get any Governor to write home to his part} 7 in such a way as to embarrass them in their Parliamentary action, and perhaps to get the Ministry of the day turned out at home, which is what we might want. I do not think he could do it. It would really be a question of honour. It would be more dishonourable to turn his friends out at home than to do or not to do his duty to the country here. It is a most trying position to put any man in. But even supposing the Governor takes our view of the question, the despatch goes home and goes to theclerksin theCulonial office, and the question is, what view’ do they take. Don’t suppose that the Minister sees all our despatches. There are forty colonies at least; and, supposing that oh an average one despatch only a day is written from each of these colonies there would be forty long letters to read, and all their enclosures, every day, by a man who has his duty to perform—his duties in Parliament, his duties in the Council, his duties to his constituents, and all his own private affairs to manage. It is absolutely impossible that he could read these letters. They go to “the clerks in the Colonial Office, and they determine what they will lay before the Minister, and what they will advise him to do. Then the Minister does not necessarily lay the matter before Parliament at all, You must not think that every document that goes home is allowed to be brought out before the British Parliament; half of them are suppressed. If you complain of that suppression, what is the answer? The Minister will be distressed beyond measure when he hears it —it is the fault of the parliamentary clerk, poor fellow 1 You won’t get him into a scrape will you ? You won’t say anything about it? (Laughter.) That is the invariable answer. You will see, therefore, that under the present system, the Queen really has no hing to do with us. Don’t believe she would not like to have ; don’t believe she does not take an interest in her Empire; don’t believe she does not want to hand that Empire down to her descendants, and to leave a great and good name behind her. No 1 She wishes all that. What I say is

this ; and we have a perfect right to get it done under the Constitution Act: The Queen communicates with her subjects through a Secretary, who is called the Secretary of State, and who is a man of high rank at home, and a member of the Privy Council. I say let us have our ow n Secretary of State in England, name one of our own people and send him home. (Cheers.) It would not cost you half w’hat your Governor does now. If you gave your Secretary of State £3OOO a year fie would be a very great man indeed, and if you gave him £2,500 be would have more than the American Ambassador receives, and still be a great man. What would be the result of this ? Let us look at the first change. At the present moment when one of our colonists goes home to England on some mission he lands with no rank ; helpless, unavoidably, to a great extent, recognised by nobody. He goes to the Colonial Minister, upon whom he is entirely dependent for an introduction to society. He necessarily becomes under an obligation to the Colonial Minister. It would be very hard for a colonist sent home in that way to take any steps adverse to the views of the Minister who had him to dine with the greatest men in England, and had him asked to their houses. But if we had a Secretary of State of our own, and he was made a Member of the Privy Council and Right Honorable all over the world, as our Statesmen ought to be, (cheers), he would land in England a great man. He would have a right to put on the finest coat before the Queen —for all ranks in England are marked by the degrees of splendour in their dress—and he would stand by the Queen on very great occasions with other Secretaries :of State, and would have the right of laying all papers he desired before the British Parliament—not of entering the House, but of having the papers laid on the table. He would also have the right of a personal interview with the Queen, and she would become acquainted personally with our representative, who would be elevated in his own thoughts by the rank he held, instead of creeping in, not knowing what position he was to hold. A frequent inintimacy would spring up between the Queen and her subjects. As we sent home man after man she would know at least five or six in this colony, and so would take an interest in her subjects such as she never did before. When I say he would be a mem her of the Privy Council, I wish you to notice this, that the meaning of being a member of the Privy Council, is that the Queen may call upou him whenever she wants his advice. But there are hundreds of Privy Councillors whose advice she never requires at all. Still, they have the rank and rights of that position. He would not only have the rank of Privy Councillor, but that of Secretary of State, and would rank with all foreign ambassadors. That would be opening a career worthy of our statesmen in this country. (Cheers.) It w’ould raise a man in his own estimation, which would be an important thing to do. He would strive to fit himself for the position,and be worthy of it. You will raise greater men, you will cause greater openings to your children, you will come into immediate communication with your Sovereign, and none of those difficulties which are now likely to arise between this country and England, would under these circumstances take place. Difficulties might occur now from mere mismanagement. A clerk in the Colonial Office might have the gout, or be in a bad temper, and take some view of a case which would incite the greatest possible indignation here. While if we had a Secretary of State he would make a fair and impartial report to his Sovereign himself in person—and that is what I would wish to be done. (Cheers.) To be Continued.