Life of Sir George Grey: Governor, High commissioner, and Premier. An Historical Biography.
His Ideal
His Ideal.
His views were expounded in August, 1858, in the greatest despatch he ever wrote—this man of many despatches. It was remarkable for its large and statesmanlike views, its prevision of eventualities, its imaginative delineation of future social states, and the glowing ardour that animated it. Such a commonwealth as he designed would form an impregnable rampart against the native tribes. It would create an extensive industrial system and a vast commerce. It would exalt the character of the colonists and breed new types of statesmen and lawyers, divines and men of letters. And it would promote the highest interests of mankind. Evidently, the man who could conceive such a vision was endowed with an imagination that was ardent, capacious, and constructive. Was it the imagination of a statesman or an utopianist? Half a century has gone by, and the things he foresaw are still unrealised.
Was he any more a statesman in his grasp of details than he was in his general conception? He proposed to leave large powers to the States. Yet this was the blunder he had committed in New Zealand only a few years before. There he had left too large powers to the provinces, and, after attaining maturity through a brief existence of twenty-one years, the federal constitution of New Zealand was abolished in 1876.