Earl Grey is again before the public, by his despatches.
The series of Grey's Works is uninterrupted, and a blue book just out attracts more than lung notice, insomuch that the Fakeer:lien affair may be said to have been superseded by the Grey question. This latest appearance of the Colonial Secretary is characteristic. In one despatch he is seen dismissing a veteran whom he had maintained too long in a post of difficulty, to which that veteran was quite unsuited ; and he now compensates past favour bran- flouncing the dismissal in language of studied reproach, cold and cruel. After supporting Sir Harry Smith through official projects and vagaries that ought of themselves to have called for a peremptory stoppage, the statesman, sitting in a comfortable room of quiet Downing Street, now recapitulates the disasters of the field, and reproaches the aged captain, not only with his want of imams, but with his personal deficiencies. There is not a man .0 the many who have demanded the recall of Sir Harry Smith that would not have blushed to write a dismissal so harsh, so wantonly insulting. In another despatch, Lord Grey gives instructions to the new Governor and Commander-in-chief, General Cathcart ; and here *gain he is characteristically absolute and mischievous. On the suggestion of the temporary difficulties, he appoints a perma- assent Lieutenant-Governor, who is to command. East .or West, wherever the Governor is not. This new executive officer is to 'take charge of the legislation in the expiring Legislative Council; and the new Parliament is tube called upon to make good by taxation the salary of 1500/. which Lord Grey, by a stroke of his pen, adds to the civil list—that odious exaction which has bred so much dis- cord in all our colonies. With the true Anti-Colonial spirit of the Colonial Office, Lord Grey volunteers the declaration that this country has no interest in the colony but as a naval station,—ex- oepting a conscientious regard for British subjects who have gone out on the faith of Imperial protection, and a philanthropic regard for the civilization and conversion of the aborigines ! But the colonists are lectured on the virtues of submission and aelf-reliance, deference for government and self-protection ; and in the form of instructions for a report by the Governor and the Assistant-Commissioners on the future relations of the colony, Lord Grey intimates a threat that the official fron- tiers of the settlement may be restricted to the naval station, and the rest abandoned—with its settlers. Here is a nice shell of diplomatic explosives thrown into the colony, to embarrass the new Parliament and exasperate all parties !
Somebody has asked whether the Queen had seen the despatch dismissing Sir Harry Smith ; and it may well be asked whether she is cognizant of that which her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies is doing in her South African possessions P As- suredly it is not only on Foreign affairs that the eye of the Sove- reign might be usefully bent.
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