A LESSON FROM NEW ZEALAND.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1839, 14 January 1880, Page 3

A LESSON FROM NEW ZEALAND.

Under the above heading, the " Australasian " has the following remarks :—We desire to invite the attention of our readers to the political events in New Zealand that have occured since the dismissal of Pir George Grey. It was the constantly reiterated declaration of that politician that he alone stood between the people and the reimposition on their necks of an odious despotism. The object with which his opponents were struggling for the mastery was that they might undo the the beneficial influence of his reign and obstruct all the reforms he was eager to aohieve. It may be mentioned that none of these had Sir George Grey actually carried out, and his name will only be remembered as the inventor of a new tax, resembling in this the Berry Ministry, which has inscribed hardly a single measure on the Statute Book which does not add to the taxation of the people. But let us see what has actually taken place since his expulsion. The Government of Mr Hall, which the Greyites denounce as Oonservative, haa carried through the House the only liberal Electoral Bill ever seriously submitted to the Parliament —one extending the franchise in a popular direction, and executing all the reforms about whioh Sir George Grey uttered so much windy, but ineffective, oratory. The dealings of that politician with electoral reform will not readily be forgotten. Ho promised to introduce a bill to enfranchise 60,000 unenfranchised adult males—who had no existence save in his heated imagination—and what he did was to withdraw the Bill he brought in because the Upper House struck out a clause inserted as it passed through the House of Representatives to enable the Government to fraudulently stuff the rolls with Maori electors. His only action with regard to electoral reform was to obstruct it and to make it an engine for party strife. Mr Hall has taken it in hand, and in spite of the truculent opposition of its declared friends, has carried a satisfactory and liberal measure through the Lower House. Nor is this all. He has also sought to rectify the state of ruinous confusion and deficit in which Sir George Grey left the public finances by carrying a Bill to impose a fair share of the burdens of taxation on property. This object Sir George Grey was ever talking empty phrases about. Mr Hall and his Treasurer, Major Atkinson, have taken it in hand like practical mer, and have so far given effect to it that they have, in tha teeth of the opposing Grey party, carried, with immaterial alterations, a measure for the general and equitable taxation] of property through the House of Representatives. Coming to office in a time of storm and confusion, and confronted by an unscrupulous phalanx of " people's friends," this Conservative Government has done far more within a few weeks for liberal electoral reform, and for making property bear its share of the burdens of the country, than the blatant Ministry of Sir George Grey even attempted during its two years of office. The case is illustrative of the advantage of entrusting the work of reform to capable business men, as compared with leaving it in the hands of unscrupulous demagogues, whose interest it is not to settle the question but to keep it as a means of exciting strife and dissension, and thus of retaining their grip on the keys of the moneychest of the state.