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

Preface

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Preface.

It was once suggested to Sir George Grey that he should write his autobiography. "Pah!" he exclaimed, with a gesture of disgust at the-thought of recalling many a passage in his past life that he would gladly shroud behind a veil of oblivion. None the less, the idea struck root in his mind, and, when his public career in New Zealand seemed to be brought to a close by his retirement from the Legislature, it germinated. He was too indolent to write about himself, but he was at all times eager to have things written about him. Who more worthy to write a biography of him that should be virtually an autobiography than the friend who had championed his cause in the press? When Sir William Fox, who had opposed Grey during a long public life, on the platform and at the Colonial Office, in the Legislature and in the press, perverted (as Grey deemed) the story of Grey's life, it was Mr. Rees whom Grey employed to state what he considered the true version of the facts. When, again, a military officer derided Grey's claim to have diverted to India the troops sent to China at the time of the Indian mutiny, it was the same valorous defender, who, at Grey's instance, vindicated the pretension of the old High Commissioner. Mr. Rees's relations with Sir George Grey in his later years were of the most intimate character. No one was more conversant with his affairs. No one better knew his mind on all subjects of a public nature. No one had rendered him so many services. Residing now in the same city with the old Governor, Mr. Rees enjoyed unequalled opportunities of hearing the whole story of his career, at least as it appeared to Grey. Through many a Sunday afternoon Grey used the privilege of old age and talked over the narrative of his life, as he had done to dozens of others.

Written by one of the ablest men in New Zealand, Mr. Rees's biography could not be otherwise than commendable. Coming fresh, in large part, from the lips of Sir George Grey, it has page viiian authority that no other work can rival. But even Mr. Rees would not claim that it is an impartial biography. He held a brief for Sir George Grey, and the advocate has been thoroughly loyal. It is Grey's presentation of his own case— with his facts, his sentiments, his vindication of himself. But if the work derives authority from its source, it also loses as much as it gains. An old senator said that if Grey ever wrote his autobiography, it would not be a truthful history. For the same reason Mr. Rees's biography is not perfectly veracious. Certain pictures are too highly coloured; the account of Grey's refusal to bring the first New Zealand constitution into operation is, like other accounts, more graphic than correct. Certain facts are omitted. Thus, the various contentions between Grey and the Colonial Office in South Africa are clearly given, but many of the facts that tell against Grey have not been stated. Not all of the differences between Grey and his Ministers during his second New Zealand term have been described. Some, too, of the narratives enchased in it have a romantic colouring that must be derived from Sir George Grey's imagination. Let any reader compare the account of the Kafir rising in Rees with an account of it in a later work, and he will wonder whether he is reading about the same series of events.

The work just referred to—Professor Henderson's Life and Times of Sir George Grey—has none of the freshness that came to Mr. Rees from personal knowledge of and personal intercourse with Sir George Grey. Its judicial character gains by the drawback. Evidence of bias there is none. All the more weight therefore attaches to the author's unsparing judgment upon the Governor, the High Commissioner, the Premier, and the man. It is grounded on an abundant store of fresh materials. Professor Henderson was permitted to explore the archives of South Australia, and he made journeys to Western Australia, New Zealand, and the Cape expressly to examine the official documents in these colonies. He was permitted to read the private letters addressed to Grey and examine Grey's literary remains. He catechised Grey's contemporaries in South Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. He had opportunities of reproducing illuminative maps. From these new sources fresh light emerges. The author states new facts. He page ixcompletely vindicates Grey's right to spell his name as he did, and thus clears away a cloud that long lay on his reputation. Nothing was known of Grey's early schooling, and he never spoke of it. Professor Henderson supplies the lack, and further illuminates Grey's character in doing so. A South Australian resident himself, he gives a lucid and full account of Grey's dealings with the blacks in South Australia. The processes of retrenchment and reconstruction in South Australia, which Mr. Rees had reported from the only then-known source, Mr. Dutton's useful volume, are first clearly and comprehensively described. The author takes an independent view of controverted questions. He takes sides with Earl Grey, defends his action with regard to the uncultivated Maori lands, and supports his view that Grey's policy in breaking down the authority of the tribal chiefs in both New Zealand and South Africa was a disastrous mistake. Not for the first time (for his disclosure was anticipated a few years ago by an English military officer) he tells the naked truth about the taking of Weraroa. He gives what appears to be a true narrative of the Kafir rising in 1858 in broad contrast to the romantic and utterly untrustworthy account of the series of events given by Mr. Rees, doubtless from Sir George Grey's version of the facts. It shows how distorting a medium Grey's memory had become, when prompted by a glorifying but falsifying imagination. Almost the most important chapters consist of the narrative of Grey's career as High Commissioner in South Africa. His faults and errors in South Africa were known before; indeed, Mr. Rees does not seek to disguise them; but never before have Grey's repeated acts of insubordination been so clearly brought out or so conclusively sheeted home to him.

Of equal rank with these, and in some respects possessing a higher authority, as history is higher than biography, Mr. G. W. Rusden's History of New Zealand is indispensable for the full understanding of the two long periods of Grey's governorships in New Zealand. It was characterised by a late Lord Derby as a model colonial history. If a model history should be impartial, the eulogy is ill deserved. The work is, indeed, a passionate plaidoyer on behalf of the Maori race, and while it exalts the philo-Maoris of New Zealand sometimes beyond their deserts, it does scant justice to those colonial Ministers who page xdeemed the rights of the natives secondary to the interests of the present and future white inhabitants of New Zealand. But if Mr. Rusden refuses to make himself the spokesman of the thirst of expansion in a conquering race, and sometimes leaves out of account views that deserve consideration, he can, seldom be charged with perverting facts. He has many weapons in his armoury. One piece of work that has not been attempted by anyone else, even Professor Henderson, he did eminently well; he exhaustively examined the despatches in the Colonial Office, London, and he thus brought to light occurrences that, but for his scrutiny, would never have been publicly known. He also sought the acquaintance of men who had taken a large part in the events he described—especially of Grey, who obviously contributed many side-lights to the picture. Though in a distant colony, the historian lived through the events he described, and his narrative bears the marks of the vivid realisation that belongs to a contemporary of more than ordinary imagination.

A fourth work is no less indispensable to the biographer of Grey. Mr. James Drummond's brilliant and copious biography of Mr. Seddon was assuredly not written with the object of glorifying Sir George Grey. On the contrary, it is conceived in a spirit of systematic disparagement of the Minister, if not of the man, who was the remote founder of the policy Mr. Seddon pursued and the organizer of the party he led. But it furnishes an animated narrative of Grey's career as Premier, and the student of the New Zealand Hansard through the whole period when Grey was a colonial legislator will acknowledge its fidelity to truth. It also throws welcome light on Grey's relations with Mr. Seddon after Seddon became Premier.

To all these works, but especially to the first three, the present volume is deeply indebted. Without the indispensable aid they afford it could not have been written as it is—portions of it, indeed, could not have been written at all. Critically used, they have the value and the authority of historical documents.

The other materials for the biography or history of Grey are voluminous. In 1889 a Bibliography of New Zealand by the present writer was published at the Government Printing Office, Wellington. It contains an account of some 1200 books, portions of books, review and magazine articles, and pamphlets, in three languages, relating to New Zealand. Every one of these that page xiwas accessible was minutely examined and briefly described. Naturally, a large number of them relate to Grey, and they have been of use in throwing light on various parts of his career. To some of these the writer's attention was drawn by Sir George Grey.

Of still greater utility have been found the impressions derived from personal intercourse with the illustrious Governor and the information about himself then personally communi cated. He was a delightful companion, and during weeks of close daily association so long ago as 1884, or more intermittent relations, of a public as well as of a private nature, in after-years, he unbosomed as much of himself as so reticent a man was wont to do. For, with all his apparent communicativeness, he was, or was supposed to be, impenetrably reserved. The surface of his mind was spread out before you, but the depths were, it at first seemed, beyond your plummet's sounding. Just so was it with William of Orange. He who was so voluble in conversation, and always ready to converse, derived his sobriquet, not from his silence, but from his speech. That flowed out on all topics without baring his purposes respecting them, or even revealing his deepest views of them. Yet there almost always comes an hour when William the Silent or Grey the Inscrutable, who has refused to yield the secrets of his soul to the picklock or the eavesdropper, will surprise his interlocutor by voluntarily and unexpectedly, with a completeness that leaves nothing hidden, laying open the unsunned caverns and unsounded depths of his nature, as a sudden flash of lightning illumines a tract of darkness. He who had long been an enigma to his colonial contemporaries and a problem to his intimates had given up his secret. The heart of his mystery had been plucked out. The riddle of the scornful Sphinx had been read.

So, at least, it appeared to the writer. Seeing much of Grey afterwards, especially in public scenes, he found no difficulty in applying his discovery, and at its "open, Sesame!" the unbarred gates flew apart. Every utterance became significant, and every action charged with meaning. The following work, at all events, has been written from this point of view. If not always or often obtruded, it is everywhere implied. It is the keynote of the book.

page xii

With many of the former friends of Grey the writer was also well acquainted. From them—his subordinates in the old days, his colleagues in later years—he learnt much about the Governor and the Premier, the legislator and the man.

The whole story of a life so full and so varied has been told by none of his biographers. This writer omits one part of his career; that writer ignores another. One slurs over his English residence in 1868-69; another hastily summarises his legislative and Ministerial activity from 1874 to 1890. Nor in the present volume will all be found narrated. His Superintendency of Auckland Province remains in obscurity because there are no very accessible records of it, and his colleagues in it apparently do not care to recall its tenor. His amateur science, on which he plumed himself, was too unscientific, supported though it was by Sir Oliver Lodge, and anticipated by an earlier savant, to be susceptible of exact statement. Even with these excrescences lopped off, it remains a very great career. By his energy and his wisdom, his originalities and his audacities, he rose, head and shoulders, above all other colonial Governors, before him or since. He will ever be one of the greatest figures in the colonial history of the Empire.