The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News and The Morning News. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1875

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1749, 22 September 1875, Page 2

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News and The Morning News.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1875

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We observe that "Jeames" has been writing to tbe Cross from Wellington, and giving an account of the dinner given on Monday night in honor of Sir George Grey. It was, as is generally known, private in the strictest sense, and we may suppose that this fact whetted Jeames's curiosity, and he applied his ear to the key-hole after he and others had finished waiting, and had been sent away to look after the greasy plates. That he dished up the eaves-droppings, as he serves up cabbages and pastry, in accordance with the calls of his employer's palate for the time, is evident from his report. He tells us that Sir George Grey " made a conciliatory speech," whatever in all the world that may mean. "He admitted that the country had agreed to abolition, as shown by the manner in which the news of the second reading of the Bill had been treated with indifference by the people. He considered the struggle at an end." As we happen to know, on the best of authority, that these are wholly contrary to Sir George Grey's real sentiments, that so far from considering the struggle at an end, fie regards it as not yet fairly begun; that, so far from believing "the country had agreed to abolition," he knows, and rightly too, that the country demands to have its voice heard, despite the drivellings of a pensioned press and the misrepresentations of the expectants of public plunder ; that instead of regarding the acquiescence of the country as satisfaction with the passage of the Abolition Bill, he knows that the country regards that operation as a farce, feeling satisfied in the fact that it does not come into operation until after a new House of Representatives takes the reins, when the present Government will be sent to smash, and their miserable hangers-on given over to weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. As these we know to be the real sentiments of Sir George Grey, whether "Jeames" has ' actually carried table tittle-tattle from a strictly . private dinner-party, and given it the requisite flavouring, or whether, as is far more likely, the statement is merely a cool and wilfHl concoction, like the forged telegram of the Cross, now famous, and perhaps, like it, to be fathered on poor unfortunate and ill-used "George Jones, Jun.," — however, or whencesoever derived, we denounce the report in the Cross this morning, respecting the dinner given on Monday night, as another deliberately concocted and wilful lie. We are in a position to assert that none of the statements alleged to have been made, nor anything like them, were made. The entertainment was designedly made exclusively

private, in order that the future policy of the party might be freely talked over. There was the most 'cordial unanimity in the expression of continued confidence in their leader, and in the resolution that the party should he firm and undivided; and without the formulation of a definite platform the outlines of a policy were sketched that will yet make New Zealand ring again. The efforts of the Ministerial hangefS'On In the endeavour to get the faintest inkling of what was proceeding within were, we believe, compared to those of a lot of dogs with hungry chaps prowling about and sniffing the rich odours floating out of the windows from the banqueting house. But all to no effect, and we presume it is so that in the absence of such success, it was resolved to concoct expressions for Sir George Grey and Mr Fitzherbert such aa the Cross special puts into their mouths to-day. This is very low and very dirty, but not lower and dirtier than the forged telegram, which previously put traitorous words into Sir George Grey's mouth, which he had never used, but which we believe shall yet be enrolled] among the causes celebres of New Zealand. The Opposition never was in such harmony, or in better working trim, and last night's event exhibited the fact in the most convincing light.