General Elections.

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1827, 23 December 1875, Page 2

General Elections.

MR EEES AT THE MECHANICS'

INSTITUTE,

Mb. Rees, the opposition candidate for City East, addressed the electors of that district at the Mechanics' Institute last night. There was a very full attendance. Not only was every portion crowded, but many stood around the windows without, and hundreds turned away unable to find admittance. His Worship the Mayor (Mr B. Tonks) was voted to the chair, and introduced the condidate in some very telling remarks, in which he expressed his conviction that the next few months would be fraught with weal or woe to New Zealand. He hoped that they should not see in the future Auckland divided against herself. Let them make their choice. If they believed in the Ministry, let them return men pledged to support it; and, if they believed in Sir G-eorge Grey (cheers), let them return members pledged to support him (cheers).

Mr Rees, who was received with loud acclamation, began by Baying he felt a great and deep pleasure in fuelling the promise he had made to them some time ago at the Choral Hall, when Mr (now Sir Julius) Vogel bade adieu to the colony. He had no new opinions to lay before them. He was the same as he had ever been. He might repeat the same words as he had said when Sir George Grey came from retirement to fight their battles (cheers) : that he was proud to follow a leader who had won the spurs of knighthood in political fighting, and who had sacrificed his peace and retirement for the" public good. He might be pardoned for alluding to the fact that it was in some degree owing to a pamphlet which he himself had written, that Sir George had been induced to come forward. His deßire had been to meet Sir Julius Vogel in the contest. (Cheers.) It might have been deemed presumptuous in him to throw down the gauntlet to the foremost man in the colony, but he should not have been afraid to meet him. After alluding to the circumstances of Sir Julius Vogel being nominated for another constituency, Mr Rees paid a graceful tribute to the merits of Mr Clark his present opponent, and said that if he wa3 beaten (he did not think he should be) he should have the satisfaction of knowing that Auckland had a much better representative than they had in Julius Vogel. As they knew it was Mr Vogel's famous resolutions which had called him forth. The speaker then proceeded to show in what respects the Abolition of the provinces as determined by the Bill was merely nominal. The provinces were really not abolished at all. All the features of the provinces were preserved. The Bill simply abolished the Superintendents and Provincial Councils, and placed in their stead nominees of the Government who could work its ends. After the Bill had passed, the Ministerial party had a meeting and asked what the Bill meant. (Laughter). To save the feelings of the Auckland members about Wellington being continued as the seat of Government, they had left that clause out of the Act and simply asked for a vote of £00,000 for public buildings instead, which was intended to effect the same object. Then as to the Land Fund, they need not think that they were to get a share of the Land Fund through Abolition, though they were told so by Ministerial candidates. Every one of the Ministry had denied that statement. Mr Reynolds and Mr Richardson, whose word could be implicitly taken, had distinctly declared that they intended to keep the Land Fund, and that it was Sir George Grey's party wanted to take it away. He maintained that the member of City East must be, as one member had said of his constituents, either mad or fools if they believed in the ministerial party intending to allocate the Land Fund. He wished to know what the advocates of the Ministers had gained, by throwing away the substance of Provincialism and grasping at a shadow. He would not say that provincialism suchas tbey had had was the best form of Government, but he did say that if the Abolition Bill wa3 acted on, it would scatter the component parts of civil society into discord. He would aak the meeting to look with him at the question now before them in a philosophical way. There was a higher aspect than the money aspect. They had to determine under what Constitution they were to live. They had to try to get the beat possible form of Government, and the purest method of administration. In IS4G it was agreed to give a Constitution to New Zealand. For some reason this was not done till 1852, During the whole of that time the kind of Government which should be used for the colony had been deeply thought over, not only by Sir George Grey (the then Governor) and her Majesty's ministers at home, but by some of the very greatest minds in the world. Sir G. Grey was in communication on thesubject with Mr Thos. Carlyle, with John Stuart Milland Mr Froude. men whose names would be handed down to posterity in brass more enduring than marble as benefactors of mankind to the latest generations of our race. These men thought the subject out with even greater depth of mind than Major Atkinson could think it out—(laughter)—with a steadier and loftier view than Sir Julius Vogel could bring to bear on it—with a deeper and more earnest conviction of the wants of men than Sir Donald McLean —(laughter)—and certainly with a wider range of vision and a somewhat more earnest desire to benefit their, fellow men than Dr. Pollen would have. (Cheers and laughter, the cheers being again and again repeated.) These men had given the subject their best consideration and they had fixed upon a system under which every citizen should have a voice ir. the government. They thought, then, that the provincial system was the best calculated to provide for the fullest form of local self-govern-ment. The present Ministry could not be called statesmen (laughter), and it would be absurd to name them alongside the great men whom he had mentioned. When these ministers were about to sweep away these institutions it was time for them to think what was about to take place. Constitutions were not so easily made. He was wrong, they were easy to make. He could make a dozen that evening. (Laughter.) But after making them could they get people to live under them ? But constitutions like those of Greece Home and Britain were not written at all, they grew by degrees, like the oak from the acorn. It so happened that they were compelled to make a constitution, but if they were, they were not compelled to accept such an abortion as the Abolition Bill. Tyranny not half so gross had raised the rebellion and brought Charles the first to the scaffold: had brought about the revolution and had caused the Ballarat riots. According to the form of Government thus provided for the colony, it was generally understood that the General Assembly was not to interfere with the Provincial Council: not like the rata tree to grasp them in its arms and crush out their life blood. (Cheers). When Earl Grey went out of office Sir Chas. Packington came into office, and he caused the original constitution as prepared by Sir George Grey to be altered. He caused the Legislative Council to be nominated instead of elective from the Provincial Councils, and the General Assembly to be supreme. From these alterations had sprung all the mischief that had arisen since. The Assembly had taken all the clothes from the Provincial Councils, and now they said that it was an offence against decency for them to run about in their nakedness. (Cheers.) .We were now really governed by a power they, knew very little of. Five or six gentlemen ruled absolutely in New Zealand. They even controlled the Governors. Sir George Grey was the first Governor who disagreed with hifl Ministry. Perhaps they would . sometime hear the reason.

He guaranteed that if it ever were made public, it would lend a fresh lustre to Sir George Grey's name. He believed that there never was in any country a more corrupt Assembly than that which had just ceased to exist. Why, many of the Ministers had members in their, pay as editors of newspapers. (Cheers.) The Government not only controlled the Lower House, but they sent their nominees to the Upper House. So that they held the strings—the purse-strings and all the other strings; and, as they knew, with a pretty close grasp. The mighty power of the newspaper press had far surpassed the prestige of trial by jury—the palladium of English liberty as it had been called. What did the Ministry do with the press. They bribed some papers, bought others, and defied the rest. If the press had not been so corrupt, the Ministers would not have dared to do one balf what they had done. They had a paper in Auckland which made it its business to hold up to scorn everyone who fought for the people's liberties, which tried all it could to pick holes in them, and if they could not, they made them. (Cheers.) He wondered how people could support Buch a paper. Well, the Ministers had corrupted the press. (An interruption was here caused by Andrew Heavy calling out that he would eive £5 towards the election, and would bet any money Rees would win. The interruption continued some minutes.) He condemned the system of bringing in the civil servants to rule them as had been done in the case of Dr. Pollen, Mr Gisborne and Mr Bowen. The last appointment he believed was made in compensation for not receiving a judgeship, and the intended judge had just commenced his studies as a law student. (Laughter.) He thought the people should be careful before they threw away dirty water to see they had clean. (Hear, hear.) The speaker then touched upon the proceedings in connection with the Indemnification Bill. The worst of it was, that it did not make the names known. So the people did not know who the culprits were so as to beware of them. He believed that if Buch a bill had been brought before any other House it would have been taken up and, with the gentleman who brought it, kicked out. (Cheers.) He dwelt at some length on the financial position ot the country and said he had been informed, he could not say with what truth, that the document, purporting to be the articles of agreement by which the loan had been deposited with one banking establishment, which had been submitted for legal advice in England was not the original document. If this were so, it was not a bit worse than the misappropriation of 15,000 in the Mangare Bridge* than the drawing of £4000 by Vogel without accounting for it, or than many other acts of the Government. Gentlemen had told them that they were in favor of getting the land fund for the North Island, bat opposed to the repeal of the Abolition Bill. Why, the fact was, they could not get an allocation of the land fund without the repeal of the Abolition Bill. Both were so intermingled that if the land fund clauses were picked out, the Bill would drop to pieces. The idea of equal taxation without the repeal of the Abolition Bill was equally absurd. If they took the taxation clauses out of the Bill they simply had the substitution of Government nominees for their elected representatives (hear). They were standing on the ruins of a consti tution, and could they wonder, in view of the clumsy way in which the Ministry had taken it to pieces, that the great minds who had contrived it should regard their proceedings with horror. Sir George Grey had brought to his mind new ideas on the subject of Provincialism. He now saw that it was a system which, if oonducted properly wouid have brought real local Government home to the doors of the people. And they would find that if they did make Shires and Shire Councils they would come rouiad very nearly to the original constitution of the colony. The speaker then expressed his firm conviction that if the people exerted themselves and used their influence among their frisnds, a bright day was yet in store for New Zealand. He referred to the great fall in the Customs revenue and expressed his conviction that the land-fand would, by general consent, become colonial revenue to meet the colonial liabilities. He entered at some length into the question of Separation and expressed his belief that Auckland would benefit by such a measure, and that, with Auckland as the capital, the North Island would again rise to its natural ascendancy. He acknowledged Sir George Grey aa a leader from no slavish adherence but as believing him qualified for a leader from his experience and the purity of motive which had actuated him in coming forward to aid them. (Cheers.) Sir George Grey was not content to be put off with shallow evasions—not content to allow the carcase to be hidden out of sight when it should be exposed to view and have an inquest held over it. He would not sacrifice the good of the colony to the ambitious designs of the few, and would work on for their welfare till he saw New Zealand once more a free, prosperous, and happy land. Mr Rees sat down amid thunders of applause.

In response to questions, Mr Rees said he should certainly defend I the citizens from any brutality on the part of the police, who, he considered should be under local control. He believed that the sons of old colonists had a right to the same privileges as had been accorded to new comers. If any civil servant had been guilty of substituting a false document in the matter he had spoken of in his speech, he should be decidedly in favor of having him brought to the bar of the House and punished. (An elector here suggested that hanging would be the proper punishment. (Laughter)—). Mr Eees also in reply to Mr Shera, said that if he and his friends failed to get Separation or allocation of the land fund, he would himself see that a bill was brought in to localise the Customs duties.

Mr Shera moved the following resolution : —" That this meeting having heard with great satisfaction Mr Kees' statement and explanation of his political principles, and his intention of giving a vigorous support to Sir George Grey, cordially expresses its confidence in him as a fit and proper person to represent Auckland City East in the General Assembly of New Zealand."

Mr B. Levy seconded the resolution. There being no amendment, the Chairman put the resolution, which was carried with unanimity, the audience cheering lustily. A vote of thanks was accorded the Chairman, and the meeting separated after giving three cheers for Sir George Grey and three for Mr Kees.