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 page 78dictated. 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?