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

His Retreat

His Retreat.

That hour of triumph lay far in the distance, and meanwhile he was informed that the Liberal leaders were embarrassed by his persistent advocacy of a cause then much in advance of their designs. Told by them that page 176lie was compromising the party and conscious that he was compromising himself by association with certain Radical irreconcilables, he resolved on a great sacrifice. As Salinguerra, in Browning's epic, banished himself to Padua, so that—

" Said he, my presence, judged the single bar To permanent tranquillity, may jar No longer——"

Grey impulsively decidedly to leave England. It was an irreparable mistake. Had he chosen to bide his time, no power under heaven could have kept him out of Parliament. As a legislator, he would have been only at his second-best, for he had no mastery of detail. But he had a large grasp of principles, a gift of luminous exposition, and a zeal for propaganda that would have found in the Legislature or on the platform their fitting sphere. He might eventually have done much to organize a national system of colonisation. He might have become standing colonial adviser to the House, or the voluntary spokesman of the Australasian colonies. It would have been interesting to observe how he confronted the great leader of the Liberal party, whose rooted distrust he reciprocated with lifelong dislike, and how these two haughty spirits, like Michael and Lucifer in Byron's most splendid poem, comported themselves in the shock of inevitable battle. All such chances, useful and ornamental, were for ever thrown away by the rash decision. He had only to bid adieu to the distinguished men of letters and science with whom he had consorted.