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

Surrender of the Colonial Office

page 58

Surrender of the Colonial Office.

We need not now hesitate to say that the Governor was wholly in the right. It was a thoroughly bad Constitution. We may go further, and admit that it was better for the Colony, at that stage, to be governed by an enlightened despot than by a packed Legislature. The Colonial Office took the same view. Lord Grey confessed that he was staggered by the fact that no single Maori could read or write the English language. He could not understand that the missionaries should be teaching the natives to read and write their own language instead of that of the English. None the less, he meekly accepted the snub, and even turned the other cheek. He made haste to procure the passing of an Act suspending the Constitution for a period of five years.

The debates that took place in the House of Commons in December, 1847, and February, 1848, were highly flattering to the young Governor. With his habitual exaggeration or malapropism, Disraeli described Mm as being "appalled" by the receipt of the copy of the Constitution, but he lauded the Governor's "discretion and abilities." Lord Lincoln, the future Duke of Newcastle, thought the Act should be repealed, not suspended. Some future notabilities took part in it. A trio of friends, inspired perhaps by common ecclesiastical sympathies— Gladstone, Roundell Palmer, and Cardwell, approved of the Bishop's protest. Earl Grey admitted that the Suspensory Act was "founded almost entirely on the recommendations of Captain Grey,'' who ''so thoroughly understood the position and interests of the Colony." With a comic want of penetration the Secretary of State apologised to the Governor for throwing on his shoulders the burden of personal rule. Next year he was knighted. The force of complaisance could no further go. An act of rebellion has seldom met with such complete success or brought such a harvest of renown to its author.