His Native Policy.

However it might condemn its officer's recalcitrancy, the Colonial Office could not afford to stand on its dignity. It wanted its strongest man for its most difficult post. Sir George Grey was sent to South Africa. The situation there was in many respects analogous to the one he had just quitted. The Governor was practically absolute. There were mutinous Native races still unsubjugated. There were allied peoples, whom he might endeavour to federate. In South Africa, accordingly, he found a field of labour after his own heart. He had gone to Western Australia on a quest worthy of Saul, the son of Kish, but he found a kingdom in the natives whom he strove to win over to a new life, to raise and improve. A more important sphere of the same kind, with larger powers, was opened up to him in South Australia, and there he laboured earnestly to effect the advancement of a degraded race. In New Zealand he was given a still grander task, and, with all the energy of an enthusiastic nature, he schemed and toiled to develop an inchoate civilisation and arrest the decline of a dying people. Once more he was granted a fresh commission of a similar order and placed in a position to lift one or another of the lower members of the human family from its slime.

The blacks of South Africa did not belong to a race that excited a like enthusiasm with the Maoris. Most of them were negroes, far down in the scale, and there was then no evidence that they could be raised. Unlike the Maoris, they were not personally attractive. It made no difference to Grey. With a heart large enough to embrace all the page 97failures and abortions of humanity, he set himself to improve the condition of the Bantus as he had done to improve the condition of the Maoris. His efforts were remarkable, and his apparent success was notable.