New Zealand Mail. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1879. WEEKLY BULLETIN.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 365, 8 February 1879, Page 14

New Zealand Mail. PUBLISHED WEEKLY. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1879. WEEKLY BULLETIN.

Statesmen and politicians, as well as penny-a-liners, are subject to the influences of the "silly" season; the forcing process -which produces the cabbage of great magnitude, the enormous gooseberry, or the unparalleled cucumber of the newspapers during the holiday times of the recess developes occasionally also some remarkable products in the minds of the greatest men. Our Premier has conceived. Personal government is the enormous gooseberry of the Ministerial mind. We have been taught to believe that the Crown is the fountain of justice, but we see Ministers arrogating to themselves the right to exercise the prerogative of the Crown in the execution of the criminal law. The power over the public purse, we have been taught to believe, rested with the representative of the people in Parliament assembled, yet we see the Premier undertaking to expend "enormous" sums of the public money for the advantage of his own constituents upon a railway not authorised by law, and of which no word has been heard in the General Assembly. The office of representative of the Crown in this Colony has always been held in honor, and, since 1854, at any rate, the personal representative of her Majesty has always received respect and consideration from the gentlemen who successively have formed the committee of the Parliament chosen to be his responsible advisers, and known as the Cabinet. But offensiveness in public, and personal offensiveness in the direct official relations of the Governor and the Premier, Sir George Grey, have taken the place of the high courtesy which gentlemen in New Zealand who have held Ministerial

office have, as a rule, extended for their own honor and for the credit of the Colony to the distinguished strangers who from time to time have come, not of their own will, bxit by command of our Queen, to represent the Po.yal authority in this Colony, under the Constitution Act. We may blush to record the fact, but if Lord Normanby could condescend to complain this is what lie would be obliged to tell the people of New Zealand on the eve of his departure from their shores. The discovery and exposure of the Thames Railway job has flutoered the Vo?scians terribly, and all the vials of wrath in the Ministerial camp are poured out upon that " inimy iv Auckland," the New Zealand Times, that dared to question the right of the Premier to do what he chooses with the money of the people without the authority of law. There is no denial of the facts, however, and there can be none. Mr. Stout's millenium is in view. Every man is to be an agriculturist and to have his own little bit of ground, which he must divide equally amongst his children, and they again equally amongst their descendants. The condition of the French and German peasants is supposed to represent the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The mother of the family in that Arcadia may be seen holding* the rude plough to which the cow is harnessed, or carrying the basket of dung on her back from the stable to the furrow, whilst the children of tenderest age, when there are any, are at work in the little field. The continuous Ministry left to their successors a very " liberal" Land Act, which is now upon the Statute-book, and which opened the whole of the Crown lands of the colony on the easiest, terms to the poor man. But the poor man's friend, Sir George Grey, tried by a most unconstitutional trick to get the Governor's veto to this liberal law—the Land Act, 1877, he having previously secured the passing of the Crown Lands Sale Act. 1877, which doubled, and in some cases quadrupled, the price of the public lands, for the benefit of the poor man. This was done, no doubt, with the benevolent purj)ose, according to the Ministerial view, of preventing him from getting too many acres and suddenly becoming an aristocrat. That "liberal" land law of the present Government still stands beside or upon the other one. If it were not for the recollection of the boastful impudence, untruthfulness, and want of generosity which have distinguished the Ministerial statements of the relations of the present Government with the disaffected natives, a sentiment of pity might be excited for the humiliating exposures to which Ministers of the Crown have been recently subjected. "Vigilant correspondents keep our readers posted as to facts, so we need not recapitulate. Pewi is at Taupo, and is reported in the Press Agency telegrams to have committed a gross outrage upon a high official in that district. The strong language represents the high sense of official dignity entertained by the reporter, but it seems hardly suited to the occasion. The high officer in question supposed that he had been sent for by the chief, but was not able to present himself immediately. He presented himself on the next day. After the usual tena ho hoe the distinguished aboriginal rolled himself up in his blanket and instantly went to sleep. Having waited half an hour the officer inquired whether he was wanted, and was informed bluntly that he wasn't; whereupon he went away. Familiarity, it is said, breeds contempt, and Rewi who, as we have heard, slept with the Native Minister at Taranaki, and allowed that honorable gentleman to sleep with him in return, has not learned to conceal his sentiments with regard to government officials generally. The old gentleman was rude, no doubt; but if he objected to be " drawn," as was probably what he feared, he might have discussed with Major Scannell the mysterious instinct which attracts '' the little mouse to the " little bit of cheese," and have fenced off business by philosophy or gossip, as Sir George Grey can do so cleverly. Manga is a child of nature, keen, but not always courtly. . The Ides of March are coming I It our Cjesar should fall at the foot of a pillar in Tawhiao's house at Hikurangi, wounded, as Mr. Pecksniff would say, in his tenderest feelings of love for the Native people, by the remorseless tongue of this Maori Brutus, we commend to his memory a rendering of the old classic sDeech once given in our House of Representatives by a Southern member, who made the great Emperor exclaim in the supreme moment — et tu quoque! this in the vernacular, means " You're another."