Leading Article from New Zealand Herald, Tuesday, March 23, 1875.

Not one of the thousand people who listened to Sir George Grey last night, but must have felt that a new power had arisen, and that they saw before them a man destined to influence the fortunes of the colony in the future as he had done so largely in the past. The enthusiastic, ringing cheers which greeted Sir George at the conclusion of his speech were the heart-felt expression of this feeling. They were a tribute to the earnestness, the single-mindedness and the patriotism manifested in every thought to which such eloquent utterance was given.

The whole address was so different in style, matter, and treatment to anything usually heard on our political platforms that it must have taken many by surprise. Rising above the merely local topics which generally form the substance of speeches on such occasions, Sir George devoted himself to the higher politics of which he is a master. In handling his subject from this point he paid a compliment to the intelligence of those whom he was addressing which they were not slow to appreciate. He unveiled before them the mysteries of statecraft and office. He told them how they were really governed both in England and in the colony and illustrated his views with anecdote and cases in point. Beginning with the Colonial Office he pointed out how little the Minister for the Colonies had to do with them, and that they were really under the control of the clerks in the Office on whom that Minister was dependent. He told them how Governors were made, and how that which was an appointment closely scanned by parties in the Imperial Parliament in the olden days, had degenerated merely into a comfortable place to which was consigned political friends or inconvenient opponents whom it was desirable to get out of the way. As a natural consequence, Governors so appointed had become mere machines doing the behests of the Colonial Ministry for the time being. It was a question undersuch circumstances whether the time had not come, in the interests of the colony and of the Empire, that Governors appointed by the Colonial Office should cease.

He was sarcastic in his description of the Life Peers with their life pensions of £120 a-year, forming our Upper House and representing nothing but the Minister to whose particular favour they owe their appointment. He was equally happy in his comments on the new Order of St. Michael and St. George, which had been revived by the Colonial office as a new means of power over colonial statesmen, If colonists were to be page 2 honoured, let them be enrolled in the great orders which commanded respect and which were known throughout the Empire. Let them scorn a paltry rank which was only recognised in the colony itself and which they could only exhibit in England with a sheep-facedness that neither elevated the wearer in his own esteem nor raised the character of colonists generally who could be supposed to rest contented with such toys. The revival of this Maltese order was not only unworthy as separating the colonists by a marked line from the people in the home country to whom it was unknown, but it had a political significance to which public attention could not be too earnestly directed. If the people of New Zealand were worthy of self-government they would jealously guard their Legislature from all external interference and would not countenance the existence of rewards bestowed by others than themselves, when those rewards were not recognised by the Empire at large. Let colonists who have done good service to their own colony, and through it to the Empire, be enrolled in the great Imperial orders of which all Englishmen were justly proud. There would then be the safeguard that public vigilance at home would see the honors worthily bestowed. But with new orders—for colonial circulation only—the safeguard did not exist, and honors were given at the mere recommendation of a Governor who was thus endowed with a means of influencing colonial men and colonial politics, illegitimate because one which the people who were governed had no means of controlling. We cannot follow Sir George through his admirable remarks on these questions to which a large part of his speech was devoted. The speech itself will be widely read and receive the consideration which the greatness of its topics and its lofty treatment merit. The land question and the Resolutions of last session were also dealt with.

Sir George shewed how unfair the whole management of the Crown lands had been, and how especially Auckland had suffered. Commenting on the first Resolution for the abolition of the North Island provinces, he referred to the argument used that they had not been successful in the conduct of local affairs while those of Canterbury and Otago had been. Now, admitting this for argument sake, said Sir George, what is the inference to be fairly drawn? Canterbury and Otago are in that case eminent examples of the benefits of local management when proper funds are provided. If Auckland has failed, it is not that local management is a mistake or that her people are inferior to those of the South. It is that Auckland has been deprived of the funds which the latter, by the misappropriation of the land sales, possess. A statesman, especially if a representative of City East, should not say therefore that the remedy was to abolish these local institutions in the North, but should set himself to work to find these institutions with the funds required and which the Constitution Act provided until tampered with by legislation which had been imposed on the people by a series of surprises in the Assembly, and at its instigation, in the Imperial Parliament. If the Government were in earnest now in providing a landed estate for this province, do not let them set a number of agents at work competing with each other as they were doing, but let them hand over the money to the Provincial Governments to be expended under the watchful control of the Councils and the people. Then they might hope gradually to acquire a valuable estate and good land suited for settlement. He had no such hopes under the present irresponsible system and in the conflict of agents dependent on the extent of their purchases—whether the land be good or bad—for the commission which formed their chief remuneration.

Finally, Sir George sketched out a scheme of Government so novel in its features, yet so grand and broad, that it is sure to command the attention of other colonies as well as of New Zealand. His two chief objects were to bring the colony into direct communication with the Crown and to avoid as far as possible all legislation or any system which could tend to reproduce the strong class distinctions; and the inequalities of wealth and fearful misery largely consequent upon them, that England had inherited from bygone times.

He would effect the former object by abolishing the now useless office of Governor and substituting for it a Secretary of State for the Colony, appointed by the colony and resident in London. The Secretary would be a member of the Privy Council, a Right Honorable all the world over, a man of high position able to do by right for colonists going home that which they were now obliged to seek as a favour in the ante-rooms of a colonial Minister. The Queen would herself welcome such an officer and be pleased to grant him the right of direct communica- page 3 tion on all matters connected with the colony he represented. Her Majesty's natural desire to bind the Empire together and guard it for her children would induce her to grant this favour, apart from the benefit which it would confer on the colonists and the independence of the position in which it would place them. The Secretaries of State for the various colonies, if this system were adopted, would be a powerful body in London and the office would form a new and lofty object of ambition. The second great object he would seek, by guarding to the uttermost against the absorption of power and patronage by any single class or section of the community. It was for this reason that he so highly valued the Provincial Institutions which were under the direct control, in every element, of the whole of the people and would be their best safeguard against undue usurpation by any particular class. He valued them also as schools for political training and as giving openings for laudable ambition to every man of ability, in every class, who could command the confidence of his fellow-colonists. We refer to the speech itself for Sir George Grey's further opinions on this and on other subjects. It was a speech unequalled in breadth of view, in grasp of principle and in clear exposition, by anything yet heard in Auckland and it marks a new era in the politics both of the province and the colony.