SIR GEORGE GREY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4269, 25 November 1874, Page 3

SIR GEORGE GREY.

(From the Auckland Echo, November 10.) The correspondence between Sir George Grey and Sir James Fergusson has, we suppose, no precedent iu the history of colonies. The position and antecedents of the first enable him naturally to take steps which would amount to mere impertinences in another man ,* but we are not sure that they save even him from the imputation of acting unwisely in the step he has taken. That Sir George Grey should become tho champion of Provincial Governments is not remarkable, and we do not at all regret it. No one knows so well what he meant by our institutions when he framed them as their author—perhaps we might say with truth that nobody else has ever thoroughly understood their intention but himself. He can therefore speak with overwhelming authority about tho theory of the matter. The question remains, docs he know as much of the practice ? Ho has told tho Governor of the colony that ho has taken no part in the politics of tho country, and the remark appears to us to condemn him. Ho cannot have understood in the least what was going on in the colony or he would long since have stepped

in and tried to save our provincial institutions from the ruin which is now prophesied, when it is .all but accomplished. If the founder of the New Zealand Constitution had been awake to the signs of the times he should have taken an active part in this question years ago. He might have been in time to save his ideal from destruction then, while now he can only lecture the Governor and the Home Government upon the mistakes which have been made. He wakes to the perception of the huge injustice of the compact of 1856 in the year 1874, and yet strangely enough he had been Governor of the colony for years while that monstrous compact was recognised and acted upon. He is startled to find that it is proposed to sweep away the provinces in 1874, when for years previously he might have seen had he taken a part in public affairs —or even an interest in them—that the question of abolition was obtaining prominence in men’s minds, and that the way was being prepared for its accomplishment by the impoverishment aud degradation of the provinces. All this puts Sir George Grey in the -wrong. One who has taken so little interest in events as they occurred is little likely to judge properly of the results of those events on the feelings and mi mis of the people. It must be confessed, that the Governor’s reply is likely to prove disagreeable to Sir George. And yet there is both courtesy and sound sense in it. He thinks‘the memorial sent him was hardly such as full consideration of the matter would have drawn from Sir George Grey. And in this we agree with him. It was an extraordinary proposal that the Governor should, on his own responsibility, summon a Parliament—but just released from a session—to re-coasider a question which was professedly left to be fully discussed at the next regular session, wheu the proposals of the Government should be matured. How could a Governor justify to himself or to the Parliament, when assembled, so extraordinary a step on grounds so insufficient? How could lie introduce the subject to the Assembly wheu beyond Sir George Grey’s memorial he had nothing new to lay before them ? The request, we confess, appeal’s to ns to be almost a ridiculous one, and we cannot feel surprised at the tone of hardly-suppressed wonder that runs through the Governor’s reply. As for sending Sir Georges petition to Her Majesty, that is entirely his own affair.