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

The New Constitution. — Colonial Discontent

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 page 77city 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.