A VICTORIAN VIEW OF SIR GEORGE GREY.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1349, 30 August 1883, Page 4

A VICTORIAN VIEW OF SIR GEORGE GREY.

Sir George Grey (says the “Australasian ” is continuing his self-ap-pointed task of hindering the progress of practical business in the New Cealand Parliament by introducing measures intended to provide against all possible eventualities. The latest of the hon. member’s measures which the House has had to reject was one providing for the introduction of the plebiscite system by taking the opinion of the electors in this manner when the two Houses fail to agree. What place this provision would fill in the constitution of the future, according to Sir George Grey, in which the Upper House will be abolished, does not very clearly appear. It is hardly possible for Victorians to discuss plebiscite proposals very patiently. They are associated in our minds with the period of greatest degradation parliamentary institutions ever passed through in this colony. They were part of a system of violence and shameless corruption, and undisguised greed and impudent tergiversation, a system which it was desired to perpetuate by subjecting the deliberations of Parliament to the haphazard decisions of excited majorities of the electors. The system broke down here when the people passed through their fever-tide of passion and regained their common sense, and it will be very long before the most audacious politician will again dare to propose :i plebiscitory system in Victoria. Possibly its debased associations here had some weight with the New Zealand House of Representatives, which rejected Sir George Grey’s Bill by lortv-sixto twenty-four.