The Evolution of a Rebel.

The story of his career is the evolution of a rebel. We perceive the genesis of the rebel in his flight from school. He broke away from the army to head an exploring expedition. He started on a second journey of exploration without awaiting the sanction of the Secretary of State and consequently without knowing that it had been withdrawn. In South Australia the autocrat was maturing and the future rebel in training. There he drew bills on the Imperial Government after he knew that his predecessor's bills had been dishonoured. He incurred unauthorised expenditure there, though with a benevolent end—the improvement of the natives. During his first term in New Zealand, when he refused to give effect to the political constitution fashioned in the Colonial Office, the rebel flung his first bold, and yet in terms respectful, defiance. In South Africa, when he put the Fingoes and the German Legion on full pay against the instructions of the War Office, when he continued his enlightened administration of British Kafraria in spite of the reduction of the necessary English Parliamentary vote, when he diverted to Calcutta the British troops touching at the Cape, when he sent out troops, horses, and specie to India during the Mutiny, when he re-enrolled the German Legion and despatched it to Bombay, and when he promoted the federation of South Africa in a manner opposed to the instructions of the Colonial Office, his rebellion was full-blown. His second term of office in New Zealand was nobly humanitarian as regards the page 200Maoris, and his squabbles with his Ministers were in a good cause. But again he quarrelled violently with the Colonial Office, with the War Office, with the generals in command of the troops, with the Commissary-General, with his Ministers. At last, his rebellion rose to the point of defying the Colonial Office. The spirit that would neither obey nor brook disobedience had grown incorrigible.

Grey was thus a rebel all his days. Was he in error all his days? With Carlyle, we must distinguish. Was the law or the power he rebelled against that of the world, an earth-born force, a creature of error, where it was not an emanation of the Pit? Then Ms rebellion was justified. Was it "the eternal law of God Almighty in the universe?" Then were his revolt grave indeed, kindled by infernal fires, led astray by marsh-lights. During the early years of Grey's life, at least, it was in the main a justifiable rebellion, even if it was the rebellion of a would-be autocrat. During Ms later years it was the revolt of a defeated autocrat. He now burned what he had worshipped, and, being unable to govern, he rebelled against all government. But he was no vulgar rebel. His aims were, in a manner, Promethean. He was ever eager for the prosperity of the individuals he knew. His eloquence rose to its highest point when he painted the possible future of "the unborn millions." He resisted monopolies. He fought land-grabbers, lay and clerical, individually and in mass. He was valiant in defence of human rights. His war against corporate exelusiveness was lifelong. He would have thrown open the closed professions. He founded libraries and aided art-galleries to which all had free access. No human being should be shut out from the loftiest possibilities of our common nature. The lower races excited his compassion and engaged his sympathies: he seemed to see in them, not so much the wrecks of a fallen humanity, as the germs of a nascent civilisation. In the artizan he recognized an equal—to others; in the schoolboy he discovered the potentialities of future fame. If he was a rebel, he was therefore endowed with a rebel's nobler qualities. For, page 201we repeat it, this man was of heroic lineage and cast in imperial mould. If, instead of the mimic arena of a British colony, he had been given a kingdom or a continent for a theatre, he would have achieved lasting renown. He had been promised the Governor-Generalship of Canada and might have aspired to the Viceroyalty of India, where, at an earlier date, he might have been a Clive or a Hastings.

He had a rebel's fate. Whether it is at St. Helena, Friederiehsruh, or Kawau, inevitable defeat is his portion who sets his will against the nature of things. But in the lives of all there is an earlier period, when the recalcitrant will was in alliance with that same nature and was its organ, when alone that work was done which they were sent here to do. That fruitful period in Sir George Grey's life is to be found in his career as Governor of South Australia and New Zealand, before these colonies had been granted responsible government. It is different with his High Commissionership at the Cape. There again are two periods. Till 1858 he was still loyal to the Empire, if he was often enough disloyal to the department which controlled his relations with the Empire. Had he been placed in the position of a Roman dictator, he would have been acting legally and constitutionally. In 1858 his initiation of South African federation was undoubtedly, in the judgment of the Colonial Office, an act of disloyalty to the Empire. The attitude he then assumed was the attitude of a Cæsar to the Roman Senate. Had he possessed a military force, he was capable of attempting a South African Pharsalia. It was the rebellion of "the man who was born to be king." With his condemnation and recall began the down-grade movement and the return of the curve.

The rebellious temper thus matured unfitted him to be a constitutional Minister. The testimony of his colleagues is to the effect that there was no living with him. There have been constantly recurring specimens of that type. Burke, Chateaubriand, Brougham, and Fichte were all men whom a domineering spirit and an irascible temper made impracticable. All were, in consequence, page 202driven from the offices they held and stripped of the influence they should have exercised. Burke and Fichte, at all events, remained loyal. What thoughts seethed in Brougham's ill-balanced brain we do not know. Chateaubriand, the elder Comte d'Haussonville informs us, meditated an eighteenth of Brumaire. And Sir George Grey, at least in his wilder moods, schemed an Imperial revolution.