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

Two Policies

Two Policies.

The development of the topic has, however, led us to anticipate the course of events. The virtual rupture of Grey's relations with Cameron brought him more into harmony with his Ministers. He claimed, or his official biographer claims for him, that, during his second governorship in New Zealand, he was in more harmonious relations with his Ministers than with the Colonial Office. It is a very bad account of his relations with the Colonial Office. During at least one-half of his second governorship he was on almost the worst possible terms with his Ministers. In one chief department which absorbed all others—that of Native affairs—he was certainly not continuously in harmony with his Ministers, and for the greater part of the time he was in general agreement with the Secretary for the Colonies. The disagreement was no accident, and it concerned principles, not details. For a period of thirty years, almost from the granting of representative institutions in 1854 till 1884, the New Zealand Ministry, save at rare and brief intervals, was strongly anti-Maori. The conflicts and collisions on this line between the Governor and his Ministers were incessant. They stood for two different causes—the one page 152for the preservation of an indigenous race, the other for the expansion of a young immigrant community. They could not but collide; collision, was in fact, their chronic state. On the Governor's side there were abundant consideration and conciliation, the weapons of one whom real force had deserted. On the other, the forms of reverence, too often accompanied by the reality of disrespect. His Ministers led him into error, inducing him to issue instructions he disagreed with, and he had sometimes to thank subordinates for revealing the real object of them. They kept him in the dark about their purposes and even about their doings. They then suddenly called upon him, as in connection with the change of the seat of government, to do things requiring deliberation. They suppressed despatches from the Secretary for the Colonies that were favourable to him and unfavourable to them. He must at times have thought that they exhausted the forms of irritation and annoyance with no other object than to persecute him out of his office. Of course, there was no such design, but had he allowed a morbid imagination to play over the facts, as he did in after-years, he might have been maddened by a multitude of acts that were certainly motived by public principle alone.