THE LYTTELTON TIMES ON SIR GEORGE GREY'S SPEECH.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1852, 20 May 1884, Page 4

THE LYTTELTON TIMES ON SIR GEORGE GREY'S SPEECH.

..The Great Libei al organ of Canterbury thus critisises in Sir Geoige Gioy's speech at Christchurch :— Sir Geoige Giey li.is not lost his power o\ or largo audiences His finely developed rhetorical instinct, his command of clear, simple language, and his warm sympathy with public right, always ensure tor him an expression of popular confidence. In formci political campaigns he dealt with the means by which a gioat end was to be obtained" What that end is he told us last night. Like all thoughtful men of the time, he has noted with pain the contiastsof wealth and poverty which aie the disagreeable featuies of our civilisation. With many honourable minds lie holds it to be the imperative duty ot the statesmen to devise some means whereby these contrasts may be put an end to. In persuance of that duty he describes the evils with consideiable power, and ho pioposes that remedy with all the force of clear simplicity. " Let us get back- the unearned increment by the instant imposition of a Land ta\"— that is the leading thought of his address. An euiboiant imagination carried him away on a variety of lines, and a skilful lhetiic kept all his digiessions subordinate to his main purpose. Dining the course of his speech he said much, with which sensible, thoughtful, failminded men can agiee, in denunciation of land monopoly. He gave sound advice about the treatment of theNathe lands ; Fcdciation cave him the opportunity to touch true" constitutional piinciple ; he made an uncommonly good burlesque of National Insurance ; and ■when he .spoke against the Government he was in accoul with the large audience. Under the circumstances a motion of confidence in Sir George Grey was the most natural thing in the world. People could not be expected to remember that, when Sir George Grey had the opportunity of " grasping the unearned increment " a\ ith a Land tax, ho laid on the mildest possible of imposts, and showed no sign of inci easing it. And they did not lcmeinber it. The meeting expressed not only assent to the views of Sir George Grey, but likewise confidence in his leadeislnp. It may well be doubted whether the Litter feelings has the same capacity of enduiancc that the fonncr certainly poscsses. The later poition ot .Sir George's caieer supplies no base for that feeling to rest secuiely upon His Piennerbhip, as we indicated yestordaj, is a history of the unpractical kind ot work which tlnows away gieat oppoitunities. The beginning of his career also gives evidence to the same effect. One great instance he dwelt upon last night in answer to a question, in a manner veiy suggestive. Speaking of his celebiated Land Regulations, he defended them on the giound, nr&t, that he always had advocated cheap land, and, second, that the making of these regulations was a neces&aiy pait of bus scheme for pi eventing the spread of what he coiibideied the bad piinciplcs of the Canteibury Association. He exphmed at the same time that the only safeguard a system of cheap land has against huge monopolies is a Land tax. .Sir George Grey s defence of his [Regulations, if we undeistand ife aiight, then, is that m the lunry and eagerness of battling against the Association, he adopted aland policy bcfoic the proper and necessarj safeguaid had been established. In oider, thcrefoie, to put an end to the possibility of .1 wrong, lie established the certainty of a fnr greater Miong. ll has thus come to pas? that if nn^uno wants to see the large monument's elected to Sir Gem go Gicj's unpiactical qualities by himself, he has only to go into the Noitheni Canteibuiy plain, into the pleasant hills th.it lie beyond, and to look aiound him. Instead of the smiling homesteads he lias left behind him, the hamlets, the spues, the glowing population of the Southern plains, .settled under the system condemned by Sir Geoigc Grey, he will find a lew handsome mansions, a hut or two lieie and thcie, with a solitaiy horseman canying a binocular and followed by a couple of collies, to humanise a, landscape fashioned by the legulations of winch Sir Geoige Giey appiovcd. The monument to Sir Geoige dice's unfoitujtiatc unpiactical quality is as large as &e\eial pimcipalilips. The speech of last night contains other pioofs of unlitncss lor political le.uleisliip. One is his own complaint that when he vas piewnted fiom crowding the Ordci Paper with diveisc and sundiy matteis, not a voice, so far a* he could asceitain, was laisod tlnoughout New Zealand to sustain him. If a man will waste his eneigics upon a vaiiety of subjects of no niactical interest to anybody, lie cannot, it is manifc-t, have that concentration of pin pose without which lendeiship of men is impossible. This kind of waste, intensified by want of tact, is shown in almost every subject touched upon in tlio speech. Sir Geoige could not, spc.ik of the Canterbury Association without a wild over-statement of Ins case. Selfish ness, as eveiy candid man admits, ha<played a laigc part in the development of this district. But no colony .since the wOlw 01 Id began lias evci been staited with noblci. pinci, fuci, inoie Libeial intentions than the Canteibuiy settlement, and few, in this age of land grabbing, have succeeded better in placing a a population on the .soil. Wiongs were committed by selfish legislation, but that wairantsno man either in denouncing the early settleis as slave-dnvcis in disguise after the old Gieek pattern, or in uttcily ignoi ing the good work done by them and their successor. In like manner, though the Public Works Policy has not been canied out on the onginal lines, though monopolists ha\e been benefited under it, no usefully piactical public man could say of it w h.it Sir Geoigo Giey said last night. It has benefited individuals specially, it is tine, but it has likewise veiy gieatly benefited the countiy. One pioof, and not a small one, is this new agitation against the railway rates. The policy, at least, has boon considerably moie successful than the land legulations of Sir (Jeoige Giey. The policy has done something for population ; the legulatious in this pait of the countiy ha\e only cieatcd monopoly. Federation suj plied another instance of unpiactical and unnecessary exaggeration of statement. The constitutional piinciple 15 undeniable, but the lhetoiicil niggnr is fanciful, historically outiagoous and logically unnecessary. Thus the Canterbury "Association, the Public Works Policy, Federation, all gi\e scope to qualities very useful to an iiicsponsible guerilla, but most undesiicible in a party leader. They go someway tow aids accounting fOlf 01 the chaiacter both of the eailicr and later New Zealand history of Sir George Gre.y. lie has groat gifts with high qualities, and he has the cause of the people at heait. lie can claim their fiiendship, but not their confidence in his leadership. The meeting, however, in extending to him that confidence, was ldndci than he wished. Kolo cphcop.tn was his ow n motto last night. It is the best lie lias ever, in the course of an unselfish Parliamentary career, adopted.

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