SIR GEORGE GREY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 359, 28 December 1878, Page 14

SIR GEORGE GREY.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW ZEALAND MAIL. Sir, —How are the mighty fa'len ; how great is the change that has come over the public dream. Less than twelve months since the public, especially the more unthinking and credulous portion, was being roused by the charming eloquence of our Premier to a state of enthusiasm unprecedented in the history of this country. According to his utterances the down-trodden were to be released from the serfdom in which they had been held by former rulers—elevated and blessed with that fulness of liberty, greatness of prosperity, and plenty of all the good things of this life, as yet unknown to the world. The pruning knife of ecomony was to be so dexterously applied as would reduce Governmental expenditure to a minimum, and secure increased efficiency in exery department of the administration. The Maori and all other difficulties were to disappear before the magic wand of the great Proconsul and now patriotic Premier. All discord in the country and the Senate was to cease—chaos, which he affirmed had been produced by former administrations, reduced to the most perfect order, and New Zealaud was to stand forth the envy of the world, and her legislation a pattern for the presant and all further generations of mankind. No good thing (from railways, to brass buttons) was to be withheld from the people provided they walked uprightly—that is, followed the backings and dictates of Sir George Grey. During the delivery of this gospel, the people gazed on liim with tearful eyes, seeing in him their great benefactor, and fairly staggered under the weight of promised blessings. But alas for the fickleness of everything sublunary, this day, from end to end of the colony, those faces which but a few months since were uplifted and smiling, as the owners hung on the lips of the great orator, now bear the unmistakeable impress of blank disappointment. A general leanness has set in, from being so long fed on the dry indigestible husks of broken promises. Curses on themselves for their credulity,.and on the trickster for his deception, are now the order of the day, and in the bitterness of disappointed hopes the wail is going forth, who will deliver us from the pangs of this woolf in sheep's clothing. Is it possible that the Premier can be so infatuated as to suppose that the stale meat hashed up for the fiftieth time at the Thames the other day will satisfy theNewZealand public ? If so, I predict that he next will have to drink from the bitter cup of disappointment.—l am, &c., Traveller.