THE PREMIER AT AUCKLAND.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4215, 23 September 1874, Page 2

THE PREMIER AT AUCKLAND.

(From the Souiliern Cross, September 10.) No larger political meeting was ever before held within four walls in this Colony than that which assembled last night, and never before, we venture to say, was a more honest, straightforward, and frank explanation given by any statesman to his constituents: than that made by Mr. VogeL It was not unnatural that there should be dissentients, seeing the opposition which was entertained totheproject which made Auckland, and the other Provinces of this island, the subjects of a legislative experiment. Yet it was a curious example of how fact will overcome mere sentiment, to find from the cheers of the meeting that the large assemblage endorsed the opinion of Mr. Vogel, that the local institutions necessary for the welfare

and good government of a community bad not flourished, and were not flourishing, under the Provincial system as administered in Auckland. Of this there can be no doubt, that our charitable institutions are not nearly what they ought to be ; that our gaols are insufficient, that our Lunatic Asylum is disgracefully short of the requirements ; that above all, and worst of all, our educational system —that system on which depend the morals, the comfort, and the general welfare of the youth of the present generation—is woefully below even a moderate standard. By the efforts of an unscrupulous man like Mr. W. L. Rees—of whose capacity for malicious and false libel, and readiness to traduce better men than himself, we have evidence under his own hand and out of his own mouth —the meeting permitted itself to he misled, so as to affront in the presence of the people a • representative and a statesman to whom New Zealand owes more of her advancement in social and commercial prosperity and progress than to any other man who has had a share in the Government of this Colony. Without pretension, Mr. Vogel narrated, not what he had done himself, hut what was the position of the Colony before 1869 when he took office, - and what that position is now. Rapidly advancing towards the van of the Australasian Colonies, it is admitted that that advancement is due to the financial ability, the administrative genius, the far-sightedness, and we, who know the man, do not hesitate to say the lofty and unselfish ambition of being able to connect his name with the prosperity of the Colony where he las lived, and which he has served. Almost immediately after the advent of the Ministry of which Mr. Vogel was a member, the war which had been for years desolating portions of the North Island, destroying confidence and damaging credit, was stayed. The policy of Public Works and Immigration sprang from his fertile brain, and the first fruits of this sound administration are now displaying themselves all over the Colony, in railways at work and in progress, in tens of thousands of an added population, in the opening of lands and the spreading of cultivations, with the fostering of industry, and the increase of the means of wealth. Yet because on a point of policy, because he hopes to secure for the North a land fund to he devoted to local purposes more fruitful of good than has yet been possible, and because consequently he declines, at least for the present, to absorb the land fund of the South, forasmuch as to do that would lead to a like absorption of the Northern land fund of the future—for this, through the efforts of a noisy attorney, who is not even an elector of the district, aided by a section of no less blatant auditors, a very few of whom are sufficient to create and maintain a commotion in a meeting—the Premier of the Colony was subjected to an indignity; and the political malice of a disappointed lawyer, whose -works we do not desire further to characterise, was so far permitted to be gratified by the promotion of a confusion which he evidently was there to create. Mr. Rees mounted the platform, under false pretences. He entered appearance there as an elector, pretending to be a member of the constituency of Auckland City East, when he well knew that his name is not on the electoral roll of the district. And a man like this, who can stoop to such mean subterftfges io-gniiify some miserable grudge, by persistent disturbance of the meeting, is permitted to throw a slight on one whose great services the Colony has warmly recognised throughout New Zealand. Auckland has no reason to be proud that such a thing was done by such a man; but the day will come, when the people will perceive and regret the error that has been committed, and understand the true value of mock patriots of the class of Mr. W. L. Rees. __