Mr W. L. Rees on the Vogel Administration.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3704, 8 November 1880, Page 3

Mr W. L. Rees on the Vogel Administration.

A series of letters by Mr W. Ii; Rees on New Zealand Politics and Politicians J is just now appearing in the columns of the Wanganui Herald. It is not necessary to say that the pen of Mr Rees is unsparingly severe. One of the letters opens, j with a description of the New Zealand 6>* 1870, and the writer proceeds in grandiloquent language and with characteristic modesty to sketch tbe course which the Government of that day should have followed,.continuing in this strain :— Contrast all this with the ten years of New Zealand history under the rule of Julius Vogel and his friends. They found a country quietly prosperous; they have brought it to the verge of bankruptcy. They found many Legislatures, of a simplicity of construction hitherto unknown, to do their duty fairly to the people, and make wise and just laws under which these people might live in peace; they destroyed all those Legislatures but one, and that one they entirely corrupted. They found a Legislature in which the great thoughts and the noble deeds of the " mighty departed " and of statesmen and philanthropists ■till living were spoken of with respect and received with enthusiasm —they taught it to ridicule every word and thought of greatness and to revile anyone who ventured to emulate the glories of the past or to look forward with hope to the future. They found a Parliament renowned above all Colonial Parliaments for singleness of purpose, for honesty, and for good feeling. They have made it selfish, corrupt, and revengeful. They assumed the charge of a young nation just starting upon its history, a child of illustrious parentage, a seedling from the oaks of Britain, full of life and restless energy. They offered to guide its councils, to frame its laws, to make it lie down in green pastures, to lead it beside the still waters. This young nation, full of great but nascent powers, confided itself to the hands of these shepherds. They taught it that the only good was gold or broad acres, won like Naboth's vineyard by unholy means. They stifled every noble aspiration and scoffed at every noble sentimeut. They became-the custodians of their country's honor, of its credit, of its wealth, of its lands. They dragged its honor through the dirt ana filth of a thousand discreditable actions, they ruin«d its credit, they squandered its wealth recklessly and wrongfully; they gave away its lands to themselves and their friends against the law, they libelled citizens and were convicted by a jury of their countrymen, they accused others of libelling them, and another jury found thai; the dreadful charges made were not libel. From the Crowned Head of Victoria to the most ignorant savage in the land, they injured and wronged all classes. History does .not show an easier path than that which lay before them to {greatness and renown. History does not tell of a more complete and disastrous failure. They fell like Lucifer from the battlements of Heaven, but not only for a summer'iday into the deep abyss— unless indeed we count their long reign as a summer's day. They fell without an effort, and, as it were naturally— Facilis descensus Averni.