THE PREMIER'S LOGIC.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 360, 4 January 1879, Page 8

THE PREMIER'S LOGIC.

TO THE EDITOR uif THE NEW ZEALa.NO MA.IL. Sir—The speech recently made by Sir George Grey to his constituents furnishes a good illustration of his power as an orator, and of his weakness as a politioil thinker. His intellectual training has, I believe, been literary, rathtr than scientific, and this perhaps has given him the coivmaud of a copious vocabulary, and at the same time rendered him singularly loose in his reasoning and inaccurate in his statements. As Macaulay says of Longinus, "hegives us eloquent sentences, but no principles," unless, indeed, platitmbe about right, liberty, and justice and the interests of the human race, do duty for them. Thus when he told his hearers thfit because it wa» li proposed to lease several million of Mcre3 to Canterbury runholders for an additional ten years, he pitied the first oo'lection of children he had seen for the wrong that had heen cone them," he appealed to no principle ; he did not argue the question as one of either in the widest or in the narrowest sense, but he exhibited himself as being in c< mplete accord with popular sympathies, and awoke responsive emotions in the breasts of his auditors, with the sunn certainty that Professor Tyndall causes his "singing flimes" to start into activity when he strikes th* right, note. Like the sensational preachers, Sir George speaks "to the nerves," not to ths reason, and he is by no means particular as to the nature of the emotions he calls forth, so long as they add to his power. Ag un he says, " lately the cry has been raised, 'don't mind if tho !aui is unfairly dealt with, the people who get it will improve it.' " Who, I should like to know, has raised this cry, what party, what person ? I know of none, and Sir George, when he utt< red this monstrous perversion of hi 3 opponents arguments must have been well aware that he was entirely misreprcseuting them. The whole question turns upon what is " fair," and what is " unfair dealiug with the land." His auditors, he knew, would not detect the fallacy involved, and he is not the man to hesitate about burning down Lis neighbor's house when he has his own chestnuts to roast. As Burke wrote on a similar oco u->ion, "I am most afraid of the weakest reasonings, because they discover the strongest passions." An orator whose f.dth in popular credulity is unlimited, and who appeal* to the " envy, hatred, and malice" of human Dature wi r ,h a confidence justified by success, is not s > much dangerous as a revolutionary force as he disquieting as the s-ign of the existence of antisocial elements in a community which ought to be free from them. So far as Sir George Grey is a political reasooer at all he belongs to a past age. With him everything ti a question of abstract light; he is as metaphysical a 3 Rousseau, aud if he refrsdus from referring to the "social contract" theory in so many words, he uses language which carries with it similar implications. " Let not the public money be doled out as a gift, but taken by themselves as a right," he says, sneaking to his constituents, as if anyone ever proposed so to dole out public money, and as if any man has any " right" to public money, but what the law allows—the law itself being the expression of what seems to the Legislature the most expedient way of disposing of it. Put in this way, however, the personal advantage to be gained by each individual composing a public meeting is not vividly realised —put, as Sir George Grey puts it, and every man has a vague but strong impression that he has been deprived of his birthright, and that if he only "votes straight," aud "stiuks to Sir George," a good share of that " public money," to which he has a " right," will come into his own pocket. It is tedious to analyse such a mass of rubbish as this last speech of the Premier at the Thames; but one caunot

help admiring the audaeity of the orator who could tell bis audience that the man who buys a block of land and improves it *' with money raised from a money-lender" "improves it with your money." When mounted upon the stump it seems that a man can be as completely insulated from common sense as from common honesty, and th t his audience whether few or many is cert in to be fit. It 3s a curious comment ry upon Sir George Grey's zeal or pretended Zeal for the rights of " human being>" as against "acres" that in this provincial district, if not in others, his Government, hasso mismanaged the various acts amending the " Highway Act,','directly and indirectly, that it has had to request the present wardens to continue in office in order to prevent the existing hoards from becoming defunct, thereby depriving tlie ratepayers of their right to elect new members at stated intervals. Considering that the matter was brought before the Colonial Secretory in a manner which must have made a deep impression upon that very egotistical gentleman, the blunder is the more remarkable and discreditable. The fact is, that Sir George Grey and his colleagues h*ve been so anxious to retain power by the dextrous manipulation of Maori votes', and by fomenting class jealou-ies, that much of the real work of legislation aud administration has been neglected. Added to this, Ministers have been so anxious to impress the country with a sense of the value of their services, that they have constantly interfered with details usually left to the permanent officers of the Civil Service, with the inevitable result due to meddling and muddling. When the master marries his cook the mistress is apt to spend too much time in the kitchen, and analogous political alliances give rise to similar results. The organisation of a government, like the arrangement of a household, must be founded on identical principles of fitness, aud as ' m itter in the wrong place" means "tlirt," so does a_ fussy activity in the wrong place mean confusion. —I am, <fcc. Economist.. Wanganui, 28th December.