INCIPIENT DISLOYALTY,

Observer, Volume 4, Issue 95, 8 July 1882, Page 259

INCIPIENT DISLOYALTY,

There is no disguising the fact that Sir Arthur G-ordon was not a popular Governor.- Having the temperament of an autocrat, hardened, and cemented by the nature of his official training, he waa ill-adapted for the governorship of a colony which has distanced all its neighbours in the precocity of its growth and pretentions to importance, and in its impatience of Imperial control. Ever since Mr Weld inaugurated the Self-reliant policy there have not been wanting indications of a tendency to treat our Governors as mere ciphers in the Constitution, to tolerate their existance only in the deference to a lingering sentiment of loyalty as the semblance of the link between the Mother Country and her colonies, and to centre all real power in the hands of the Premier and his colleagues. Tins feeling comes out in the freedom with which the Governor's acts and powers are discassed in Parliament, the denial of many of the prerogatives which he has claimed, and latterly in a p?££ osal to reduce his salary and allowances. Mr Macandrew gave utterance to a popular sentiment when he said, in terms of contemptuous indifference, that the Q-overnor'B absence from the Colony could nob matter one jot, inasmuch as the real Governor was the Premier. How far this feeling and tendency are the premonitory signs of that inevitable colonial independence of Imperial leading strings which ; .'st come some day we are not at present concerned to inquire. But the question that suggests itself to our more immediate consideration is how far this apparent impatience of gubernatorial control and supervision was the result of the Governor's personal unpopularity, or of a public opinion artificially created and fostered by certain interested wire-pullers to serve their o-v»n selfish purposes. ;

We are no apologists for Sir Arthur Grordon. We admit that lie lacked many of those qualities ■which are essential in a popular colonial Governor, that he was a round man in a square hole. But, looking below the surface of things, we feel bound > to say that tliere are extenuating circumstances, that he never had a fair chance from the Tery outset, that a dead set was made against him by a powerful dominant political party, that his faults were seized upon and his virtues, such as they were, disparaged, and that a good deal of his apparent unpopularity was fictitious, and based on ignorant prejudice. He came here from the Fijis heralded by the landowners and great capitalists as their bete noir ; he was followed by their vituperation and malevolence. From the first, the mind of the dominant political party here — the landowners, banks, and capitalists — • was seized with a morbid- suspicion of his acts. He was suspected of Liberal and Grreyite predilections, and detested accordingly. A Ministry, which had just been denouncing the diabolical radicalism and disloyalty of Sir George Grey, deliberately set itself to work to heap ridicule and contempt on the Gfovernor, and to manufacture a blast of public opinion — or what would pass for sueh — against him. The machinery of the Civil Service was at hand. A horde of subservient tools and sycophants, trembling before the drastic economy of Major Atkinson, were ready to take their cue from their superiors, and the sisters, cousins, and aunts of these same subordinates, — in short, society at the Seat of G-overnmenfc — followed' suit. Hired press claquers of the Ministry — paid in kind by a monopoly of official intelligence, if not remunerated in -money; and therefore possessing great influence over the Press of the Colony — were set to work to misrepresent and malign every act of the Gfovernor. To reduce his position to contempt in the eyes of the ' people, the Ministry had the brazen effrontery and incipient treason to go through the farce of questioning Sir Arthur Gordon's right to resume the governorship of the Colony after a visit, in. his capacity of High Commissioner of the Western. Pacific, to the Fijis, and' to set up a puffed-up ' dummy and nominee of their, own' in the role of a usurper. Sir Arthur. Gordon had no friends. The G-reyite party were too fresh from their attacks on his predecessor, and from their advocacy of elected Grovernors to enter the lists in Sir Arthur's defence. He was between two fires,, or between declared foes, and luke-warm friends. : \

So far, the great landowners, the landsharks, and the great monetary, institutions have triumphed.; but it may, after all, prove only , a Cadmean Victory. Sir Arthur G-ordon has not yet begun. to play his innings. When he reaches Home he will tell his. own story. to the Colonial Office. He will be able, to show how. the Parihaka raid was. hounded . on by. an unscrupulous' selfish; clique in, TaranaSi^ hungering for', the •Waimate Plains, and thirsting for the twentyfive ]ser cent, of - ( the proceeds of their sale, to>;