Life of Sir George Grey: Governor, High commissioner, and Premier. An Historical Biography.

Chapter X. — Governor of New Zealand—continued

Chapter X.
Governor of New Zealand—continued.

The New Constitution.
Colonial Discontent.

Grey would not have been Grey if he had not excited active discontent in some portion of the colony he governed. Naturally, it was at the head-quarters of the New Zealand Company that he had the most and the bitterest enemies. The main charge against him in Wellington was that he wielded all the powers of an autocrat. In 1848 he was told that his government was "more absolute than that of any other dependency of the British Crown, with the exception of Norfolk Island.'' In the following year the agitation took shape, and a Settlers' Constitutional Association was founded by men who were afterwards eminent in the public life of the Colony— Fitzherbert, Fox, Featherston, ("the three F's"—a fourth F, FitzGerald, was in opposition) and Weld, who all spoke at a public meeting in support of resolutions strongly condemnatory of the Governor. The agent in New Zealand of the Canterbury Association, the great and good Mr. Godley, did not scruple to censure Dr. (afterwards Sir David) Munro for contributing "towards the infliction of a most serious and irreparable injury upon the colonists" by merely accepting a seat in the Legislative Council, and he denounced the "anti-colonial policy" of Sir George Grey. Only a year or two later Grey was to heap coals of fire on Godley's head, as, many years later, on Weld's. At Nelson a future Premier, Mr. Stafford, four "magistrates" (probably mere justices of the peace), and some private citizens complained to Earl Grey of the Governor's absolutism. Even Auckland, the seat of government, and long his city of predilection, took sides against him, and in 1849 drew up in public meeting assembled a petition to Earl Grey, which the Governor loyally forwarded, commenting npon it in excellent temper; the animus of the meeting will appear from the fact, disclosed by Grey himself in 1876, that the chairman of the meeting apologised ten years later for signing a petition containing "assertions made for no other purpose than to give personal annoyance." * And in 1851, Mr. Fox, who had succeeded Col. Wakefield as agent in the Colony of the New Zealand Company, gathered into a head the flood of denunciation in a long and elaborate indictment, where, on many counts, he arraigned the policy and conduct of the Governor.

* N.Z. Parliamentary Debates, xxi, 368.

The Governor's Absolutism.

There was abundant truth in one at least of the charges. In 1853, reviewing his career as Colonial Minister, Earl Grey took credit to the Ministry for the freedom it had left the Governor and the powers it had clothed him with. In December, 1849, he reminded the Governor that "the whole colonial revenue was" to be appropriated by the Governor himself, "with the aid of" a Legislative Council ''nominated by the Crown and acting under the direction" of the British Government. No wonder that self-respecting members of such a council should resign seats which could not be held on terms of independence. This state of things could not be indefinitely maintained. The settlers grew clamorous for representative institutions. In 1848 and again in 1849 the Governor replied diplomatically to such clamours and firmly resisted popular pressure. To Earl Grey he maintained that only a self-supporting community was entitled to be self-governing. Always deferential in form, he professed to be equally willing, as his lordship desired, to decline to introduce free institutions till he believed they could be safely conferred, and not to delay introducing them for a single day beyond what necessity dictated. For constitutional government was "a boon which I" (the most autocratic Governor any British colony has had) "am most anxious to see conferred upon" the inhabitants. In 1849, as in 1847, he implied that the Maoris would rise in rebellion if they were handed over to the tender mercies of the colonists. Do not the subsequent course of events, the Wellington and the Wanganui little wars, and far more the protracted and disastrous conflicts in Taranaki and the Waikato that dragged through a great part of the sixties, vindicate his prescience?

Provincial Legislatures.

Yet some twenty thousand colonists, most of them belonging to a good class and not a few of them men of exceptional ability and culture, could not be kept indefinitely in a state of pupilage. Men like Fox, FitzGerald, Featherston, and Fitzherbert, like the poet Domett, the naturalist Swainson, and the geologist Mantell, like the whole body of settlers in Canterbury and Otago, were the equals and the superiors of the voters in most European countries, and were, perhaps, still more capable of governing than of being governed. Grey was well aware, to his cost, of their moral and intellectual superiority. In many a wordy battle they had shown themselves a match for the Governor and for a still greater than he, the Colonial Minister himself. That minister now authorised his deputy to introduce a measure of local government, and in the Act of 1846 he had himself furnished a pattern. That Act contained provisions for the creation of provincial legislatures and a General Assembly. The General Assembly was dropped for the time, but the Colony was ripe for the creation of provincial administrations. Physical accidents have sometimes diverted the course of public policy or affected the fates of nations. A shower of rain during the French Revolution averted a meditated rising. An earthquake in Wellington, the permanent seat of earth-tremors and earthquakes, precipitated the innovation. In October, 1850, the Governor passed an ordinance establishing Legislative Councils in each of the provinces into which the mode of colonisation had divided the Colony. There were some novel and some reactionary features in the new ordinance. The franchise was liberally granted to the Maoris—at least, to those who resided in settlements where Europeans were in a majority; other electoral districts there were to be none. Leaseholders to a fixed amount and all freeholders were to have votes. Note also that there were to be nominee members appointed by the Governor for two years only; Grey had no objection to nominee members so long as they were nominated by himself. Leading colonial citizens, such as Mr. Stafford, held that the proposed reform was not radical enough. Ahead of their time, they demanded universal suffrage and vote by ballot, two elected chambers, and the removability of the Governor by address of the two houses. These proposals should have commended themselves to the Governor, who in later days advanced further still, but either the Radical in him was not yet full-grown, or else he held that a colonial constitution should not grant political privileges too much beyond those enjoyed by citizens of the Motherland. They were more satisfactory to Earl Grey, who felt that the Governor had "removed all obstacles to the establishment of representative government in New Zealand.''

Grey's Authorship.

Sir George Grey was doubtless prepared to take further steps in the way of constitutional legislation, but he held his hand when he learnt that a constitution for New Zealand was being prepared in the Colonial Office. Though of English origin, it was of colonial parentage. The putative father of it was Sir John Pakington, who had succeeded with the Ministry of Lord Derby to a brief tenure of the Colonial Secretaryship. The real author of it was Sir George Grey. On this point the evidence is conclusive. Here is the English evidence. In February, 1852, Earl Grey acknowledged that the Provincial Councils Ordinance "has been of great service in preparing" the Bill about to be submitted to Parliament. Meanwhile, a change of Ministry took place. On July 1, Sir John Pakington transmitted the new constitution, and he acknowledged in writing to the Governor, that the measure "owes its shape in a great degree to your valuable suggestions." The Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Sir Frederick Peel, went still further. He asserted that the "bill just passed was framed, excepting in one particular, by Governor Grey himself, and it was to him that the colonists were indebted for the constitution which Parliament had granted them.''

Sir George Grey might therefore seem to be within his rights when he claimed the constitution of New Zealand as his handiwork. Yet there is a very different account of the matter. When Sir John Pakington succeeded Earl Grey as Secretary for the Colonies in 1852, he found in the pigeon-holes of the Colonial Office a bill prepared by his predecessor, granting a constitution to New Zealand. He did not accept it en bloc. According to Mr. Rees, here as everywhere expressing the belief of Sir George Grey, he summoned Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Fox, who had gone to London to launch a formidable indictment at the head of the Governor, and this most determined of Grey's opponents aided the Minister in mangling a perfect constitution. There is better evidence on the subject. Sir Charles Adderley, afterwards Lord Norton, expressly states that the measure "was based on a draft I drew up under the guidance of Gibbon Wakefield." * If Gibbon Wakefield's narrative be correct, Adderley's statement errs by unduly simplifying the actual process. The draft referred to had been "drawn up at Hams, Adderley's seat, by a committee consisting of Lord Lyttelton, Mr. Adderley, Messrs. Fox and Weld, afterwards New Zealand Premiers, and Wakefield." Wakefield, who contributed this interesting detail in a letter to Lord Lyttelton, also virtually claimed the

* Review of "The Colonial Policy of Lord J. Russell's Administration," p. 137.

Edward Gibbon Wakefield, by Dr. Garnett, pp. 330-1.

authorship of the constitution by petitioning the House of Commons in its favour. *

It is difficult to understand why Grey should have set such store by his claims to originality in connection with the constitution. These circle round the Provincial Councils. Earl Grey had anticipated this feature. Wakefield identified himself with it so passionately that he might seem to be claiming it for his own. It was through Wakefield's persistent advocacy that this part of the Act was carried, notwithstanding the opposition of Sir W. Molesworth and Robert Lowe; while Molesworth, Cobden, and Bright, we may interpolate, voted against the clause that provided for a nominee second chamber. But the provincial system was forced upon constitution-makers by the different origins of the various settlements and in part by their geographical situation. There would seem to be little merit in accepting the dictates of history and nature.

So peculiarly did Grey regard the creation of the provincial system of government as his own that, as he informed the present writer, he deliberately modelled it upon the State-system of the United States. In order to mask the source of the loan, as he confessed, he named the units 'provinces' instead of 'States.' For the same reason he named their elective heads 'superintendents' instead of 'governors.' He was radically disloyal to the British Government when he made these admissions, but it does not follow that he was equally disloyal when he devised the system and proposed the designations. His good-name is happily shielded behind a far greater name. In the debate in the House of Commons on the constitution, which he was chiefly instrumental in carrying through the House, Mr. Gladstone avowed his preference for Grey's plan of electing the second chamber in New Zealand by the Provincial legislatures. But no Cleon has ever impeached the loyalty of such an Aristides as Gladstone. Nay, it was by Earl Grey himself that the Governor's attention was drawn to the models he might

* Wakefield's letter was published in the Lyttelton Times, October 30th, 1852.

find in the constitution of the United States. Lord Grey had asked him whether he had considered American methods of government.

Mutilations.

Grey's plan of a constitution was mutilated by one organic alteration and two amputations. According to his own account, he designed that the Legislative Council should be elected by the Provincial Councils, and the project was another of the many loan-ideas he had derived from the United States. This seems to be a partial error. One-third of the Council was, by this scheme, to consist of members nominated by the Crown. He was therefore not as much of an innovator or as perfectly consistent as he fancied. Be that as it may, in the new constitution the Legislative Council was to consist entirely of members nominated by the Crown, and such, in spite of all attempts to introduce the principle of election, the constitution of the Council still is. The granting of responsible government changed the character of this nomination. Under the old dispensation, when New Zealand was a Crown Colony, the members of the Council were appointed by the Governor in the name of the Crown; under the new they were appointed by the Ministry. Grey never ceased to regret what he deemed a blunder. A nominated Upper House, he mourned, "destroyed the glorious fabric I had been privileged to frame." That roystering Radical, Sir W. Molesworth, agreed with him, and spoke against the clause, while such advanced Liberals as Cobden and Bright gave silent votes against it. A chamber of such nominees, he believed, would necessarily consist of political Conservatives hostile to all important reforms, as in fact they have often been; and they were bitterly hostile to Grey's own advanced projects when he was Premier, especially his system of land-taxation. What would he have said had he lived to see a Legislative Council converted from a highly Conservative chamber into a thorough-going Radical one by the simple device of changing the life-tenure of its members into a seven years' term, and then passing measures of a Socialistic character that have attracted the attention of all the world? The reason for the change to a nominee House was that an elected chamber would have been, like the Senate of the United States, too strong a body. The same dread has been an obstacle to making it elective ever since.

The two amputated limbs of Grey's abortion of a constitution were the municipal and rural organizations. They were wisely left to be shaped by the new legislature. Not till many years after were they perfected. The rural organs of self-government, particularly its county councils and parish councils (or townships), were one day to be adopted from her daughter by the Motherland. They were only the first links in a tributary chain that is binding the mother more closely to the daughter, and the daughters more closely to one another.

The Land Question.

A semi-political, semi-agricultural problem of no less difficulty was more urgent. The land question was, as it is, a standing perplexity. Till 1852-4 the disposal of the waste lands in all the colonies remained in the hands of the Home Government. In these years it was, in one colony after another, definitely handed over to the self-governing colonies as apart of the grand boon of constitutional freedom and representative institutions. High authorities have esteemed it a questionable step. Gibbon Wakefield, who had founded on the colonial land question the edifice of his reputation and, indeed, his career as a coloniser, held that the extensive waste lands in the colonies should be retained by the Crown with the object of promoting emigration from the Motherland and planting settlements in the colonies. Doubtless reflecting Wakefield's sentiments, with which he was well acquainted, John Stuart Mill, a disciple on this theme, advocated the same view. The great renunciation was by no means a "Greek gift," for it was generously intended; it was rather a gift of the Centaur, and it has often proved a shirt of Nessus. A distinction, very flattering to Grey, was made in the case of New Zealand.

The power to make regulations for the disposal of Crown lands, previously exercised by the Colonial Office in the name of the Crown, was unconditionally conceded to the Governor. He did not undervalue the magnitude of the concession. As he exorbitantly expressed it, he was "endowed with powers which perhaps no single man had before exercised." He forgot the conquerors of Mexico and Peru. He forgot the early Governors of New South Wales, who dealt far more autocratically with far more extensive tracts. He also forgot the fact that such powers were granted only to the Governor-in-Council, but he doubtless made light of that. In fact, he never had been effectually thwarted by his council, and he was not now.

He was not slow to avail himself of the vast powers thus placed in his hands. If his own account may be trusted, he was at heart a democrat from his youth up, and he explored North-West Australia in the hope of discovering tracts of land on which the landless masses of England might be settled. Fortune had brought to him a richer Eldorado than Western Australia was for many a year to prove. In New Zealand, where millions of acres lay expectant, awaiting the advent of the pastoralist and the agriculturalist, he had been kindled to indignation by fanciful schemes of colonisation that barred the door against proletarian settlement. He resolved to make an end of all that. On May 14, 1853, he issued a proclamation embodying a plan of rural administration and land settlement that must have been forgotten by those who describe him as a dreamer and a political mystic. It reveals a clear conception of the end he had in view and a firm grasp of the means by which it was to be gained. There were to be three classes of lands; limits were set to the number of acres that could be held; and all were to be sold by auction. Above all, lands that had hitherto been sold at £1, £2, and £3 per acre were to be sold at ten shillings and five shillings.

The ordinance roused a storm of disapprobation, but in certain districts it scored a signal success. The smallfarm settlements of Greytown, Masterton, and Carterton were reared on the ordinance, and in the province of Auckland the lands were dealt with in the interests of the great body of the people. Grey claimed that he had "made an end of the practice of closing the land against the poor.'' It might have been replied that he threw open the gates of large landed estates to the rich. By "gridironing" the land and "taking the eyes out of it" wealthy individuals were able to defeat the Governor's designs. Just so had Earl Grey suspected that they would be defeated. And just so have similar projects been thwarted in Victoria and New South Wales. Grey's whole career, especially with its many contrivances for the advancement of indigenous races, is a palmary instance of the futility of high ends, even when they are ministered to by suitable instrumentalities.