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

Open Defiance

Open Defiance.

The measure of his offences was now complete and the cup of indignation brewed at the Colonial Office full to overflowing. In July, 1867, his old enemy, the Earl of Carnarvon, took the extraordinary course of attacking his own subordinate in his absence and in a chamber where, if he had been present, he could not have defended himself. The pretext was that Grey had kept him in ignorance of things happening in New Zealand that he had a right to know. The charge was amazing. When he had been first appointed to the governorship of New Zealand, Lord Stanley instructed him to keep the Home Government in constant touch with the Colony by the writing of frequent despatches. He did not need the injunction, In every colony where he had resided he had been, of all Governors, the most copious despatch-writer. His despatches from New Zealand in particular are little less than a history of the colony from his own point of view. If he did not write voluminous despatches to Lord Carnarvon, it may have been that he bitterly remembered how he had been recalled from South Africa at his lordship's instance. But it is more probable that he did not narrate certain events because he did not believe that those events had happened. He had not done the things he was charged with, and therefore he could not say that he had done them. The earl, it seems, had the grace to apologise, and, in any case, it was less a definite charge that he made, than an outbreak of old resentment or distrust. That was in July, 1867. Grey's anger at last boiled up and boiled over. Four months later he wrote to the Duke of Buckingham, the new page 159Colonial Minister, in terms where his passion is hardly veiled. If the Colonial Office required of him blind acquiescence in their behests, he for his part owed it no obedience, but only owed his duty to the Queen and the Empire. He had a right to withstand those who had committed violent acts or supported others in doing them. And he would show that he had a will as strong as their own, recking nought of consequences. All was now said. He had flung down a gage of defiance. If it had any self-respect at all, the Colonial Office could not but accept the haughty challenge.