The Western Star. (PUBLISHED BI-WEEKLY.) WEDNESDAY, MAY 26, 1880.

Western Star, Issue 352, 26 May 1880, Page 2

The Western Star. (PUBLISHED 81-WEEKLY.) WEDNESDAY, MAY 26, 1880.

Sir George Ghey's speech at InvercargUl last week h-is been rather slightingly treated by the correspondents or the papers throughout; the colony. It is dismissed in a few lines, with a brief charaeerisalion of it as a mere rechauffe of w'hat he said a few davs before at Christclum-h. And the flight was vv«ll descMwed The exPremier, without naming Mr M'Caughan, occupied himself principally in replying to the address of the member for ihits district. Judging by the effect produced, Mr M'Cauglr-m's speech has told more than that of Sir George, notwithstanding the high reputation the latter has gained for himself as a successful rhetorici n. Mr M'Caughan's speech has been criiii-ally examined and analysed by almost every paper in the colony; Sir Q-eorge Grey's only in the local pi ess of the place where he speke. And there his been a reason for this. Mr M'Oaughan made an earnest effort at sohing the most important of all political problems at the present juncture, the financial difficulties of the colony. _ Sir George Grey spoke on every subject, but it wa* always the play of" Hamlet" without the character of Hamlet. He made no attempt to grapple in detail with the grave question, How is.the colony to pay its way without imposing the most burdensome taxation? One of our Invereargill contemporaries tells us that " it is beyond all dispute that Sir George Grey is possessed of the highest points of oratory," and yet the same journal subsequently informs its readers, " we say it in all soberness, that it is hardly possible to point, in Sir George Grey's entire harangue, to a single practical, explicit, and fairly reasoned proposal tor the amendment of any one of our institutions." Now whilst we fully concur in our contemporary's estimate of Sir George Grey's speech, that estimate seems to us eatirely to cut at the root of his claims to be possessed of the highest powers of oratory. For au orator is not a mere idle spouter of bunkum, but one who, looking at a subject from some one point of view, treats of it with such power of some sort that he carries conviction along with him. If he treats of a subject simply in its comic aspects, he must be possessed of sufficient humour to carry his audience away by storm as Curran did the juries in Ireland. If his special faculty is powerful and bitter invective, he must wield that weapon as Chatham did in England and Patrick Kenny in America. But if, on the other hand, one possessed of the highest powei's as au orator is called upou to put forth strength at a time when a country is on the verge of insolvency, he is no orator at all unless he shows something of that faculty which Mr Gladstone is master of to an extent unsurpassed in ancient or modern times—the faculty of making dry figures brilliant, poetical and beneficent to the best interests of his country and his age. And the financial question being the question of all others now imperatively occupying the attention of every thoughtful politician's attention, Sir George Grey has spokeu and completely failed. It is quite true that he sometimes enunciates some great abstract princip'e which he has found laid down in the writings of Mill, Spencer, or some eminent thinker, but he shows no capacity whatever to point out how such a principle, as modified by all the surrounding circumstances of his own. time and countrv, may be practically M-xk-A. He te'P. vl indc-o-1 wiih

Bi'.id and ' proved long ago, that there ought to bo no absolute riglit of property in laud by private individuals recognised by tbe State ; but does be urge tbat " Government land sales should bo stopped ? IS ot be. Ho was the very Premier, nnder whom our finances cauie to grief in consequence of an over-estimate in the South Island of the land that could be sold, and of an over-purchase in th<North Island of the land that might better have been left alone. Does he, then, want all freehold lands in private hands to revert to the State to be granted again on lease ? Not he ; he himself holds thousands of acres in Kavvau, and would laugh at any such wild proposal. "What, then, are his grand theories worth ? The anti-land monopolist is a great monopolist himself, and his constituents may justly ask him some such question as that which Juvenal puts to the wrongdoers of old Rome :

" Si fur djspliceat Vain, homicida Miloni, Cladius accuset rnechas, Catilina Cetbeguin?" Iu fact Sir George Grey does not believe his grand theories, or rather the grand theories of John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer. What he does believe in is the art of appealing to the lowest passions of his audience, instead of to the highest, to the envy of all superiority whethemnfellec'tual, moral, or social. His idea of colonial society is that of a republic where all men are on a dead level, and are therefore the better prepared to submit to the wil[ of an nbsolute Governor elected by the first msu who presses his claims on the mob. What we want, however, now in the colony is clearly not disunion, but union for the public good ; not a vulgar snvy, but a noble recognitioH of ability or excellence whereever it can be discovered and attained. The whole secret of Sir George Grey's policy is found in hid suggestion of an elective Governorship of New Zealand, the Governor in prospect being of course himself. He may tell us that, he has been governor of ten before, and does not want to be again. But he forgets to tell us that a governor limited by wise instructions from the Crown of Great Britian is a different person from a governor bound by no limitations, and practically therefore a king ; but we don't want a king of New Zpaland, especially if ,'that king is to be SirfGeorge Grey.