A GREAT PRO-CONSUL

Auckland Star, Volume XXIV, Issue 91, 19 April 1893, Page 8

A GREAT PRO-CONSUL

tJ.s-DER the heading " A Great Pro-consul the "Review ot Reviews" cays: " The Life and Times of Sir George Grey ' ha* been issued in London, and has called forth a tropical shower ol reviews, almost all o. them highly favourable, both to the subject ond the" author of the biography. Sir George Grey's remoteness from London has B It_LO-t the effect of remoteue-. in time on the imagination of London critics, and when his figure is thus set in historical perspective ita greatness of scale becomes apparent. All the reviewers agree that fair Geo. Grey, in the natural order of deserved promotion, should have gone from the Cape to Canada and from Ctmada to India as Govemer-Genoral. He would thus have taken his place in tho gallery of great pro-consuls which stretches from Wellesley and Comwallis to Laurence and DuD'erin ; and Sir George Grey's would not have been tho least in that procession of great names. His second appointment to New Zealand altered the complexion of Sir George Gre/s life. The reviews all admit, too, that, Sir George Grey, at the time of the Mutiny, helped to savo India, by the swift resolve and the all-compelling energy with which, on hia own responsibility, he diverted the troopa on their road to China, and despatched them, with e^ery man and rifle to be collected at tho Cape, to Calcutta. A weaker man would have shrunk from that bold act. and so added months to the horror and bloodshed of the Mutiny. •'Thetwo volumes of Mr Rees, says MrGrant Allen in the ' Daily News ' are more than a hisbory of a man, they are in greab part the history of an empire? Sir George Grey's biography ia no doubb an imporbanb contribubion to Australasian literature."