FICKLE FAME

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 130, 5 June 1933, Page 4

FICKLE FAME

KAWANA: KIOKE

ROMANTIC LIFE OF GREY

BULLETS FOR OTHER GUNS

"Never was any ruler of a land with, a Native race so greeted and so lam-' ented as Sir George Grey was when he was leaving New Zealand in 1853 on the completion of his first term of Governorship. . . The scene had changed indeed when Grey returned for his second Governorship." The contrast between the Maori love of Grey as the pacifier' of tho forties, and the Maori reaction of the sixties, is touched on by Mr. James Cowan in an article in the "New Zealand Railways Magazine," :on Governor Grey. Kaw£ria Kerei, the idol of the forties and fifties, became in the sixties kiore, tho rat. It became "a common saying that Governor Browne was -a hawk who cam© swooping down on the Maoris from a clear sky, whereas Kawana Kerei was like a kiore, a Tat; he would burrow underground and come out when and where least expected."

MAORI WHEATFARMERS IN WAIKATO.

Mr. Cowan paints the earlier picture. In the Waikato "Rangiaowhia, under missionary and official guidance and help', became a garden of cultivation and fruitfulness in the days before the war. Here came' Grey in 1848 and 1849 visiting his loyal wheatfarmers and giving them practical encouragement in the arts of civilisation. An Englishman, Tom Power, was sent to instruct the people- in ploughing and other farm work. Hoani Papita Kahawai and other chiefs of Rangiaowhia, in their address of farewell to Kawana Kerci, recalled the great kindness which he had manifested towards the people of the place and the gifts of ploughs, horses, carts, and other property, which had enabled the Maoris to assimilate some of the usages of the pakcha. 'You have made our lands important,' they wrote. 'Our love to you and our remembrance of you will not cease; no, never. Go hence, O friend, go to the Queen and carry with you our love to her in return for the gifts which, we have in our possession. If the .Queen should send another Governor, let his love for the Maoris be like yours, and we will repay him with our love.' "Another 'farmer chief, Hori te Waru, wrote: —'Our love for you is great because you have shown, us much kindness. You have elevated us and provided teachers .to instruct our children and implant good principles in their hearts.' " Yet ten years later the same Hoari Papita and his people were flying for their lives to the swamps and the ranges, from the army launched by the Governor against those once so loyal of Rangiaowhia.

ABANDONED CHURCH AND PLOUGH.

The Maoris left their beautiful village of Eangiaowhia "a ravaged and bloodstained ruin, and never agnin -were they to -worship in their pretty churches (that old Sclwyn church of Rangiaowhia still stands there) or gather the fruits of the good soil. Land and cultivations, churches, and all pasgt-d to the pakcha. For in Kawana Kcrei's absence in South Africa, Eangiaowhia had become the centre of Maori Kingito politics; and gun and tomahawk displaced the peaceful age symbolised by Tom Power's plough." When Grey returned for his second Governorship, "profound distrust had succeeded the olden.confidence. Governor Grey was 'no .longer the- gladlyhailed benefactor. -Some of the Maori descriptions of him; and his officials in the critical period .just before the Waikato War were excellently apt and terse and to-the point. The chief Patene told young. John the Government: Commissioner at Te Awamuui, that 'the officers .of the Government were worms, bait that Governor Grey was fishing with, and if they were suffered to remain some tribes of Waikato would inevitably be caught. . . . A Ngati-Haua chief said that the usual way of catching a ruru (owl) was for one man to shake some object before it to attract its attention, while his companion slipped a noose over its head from behind; so Governor Grey had sent his companion (Gorst) to dazzle them with laws and regulations whilo he was waiting a chance to entangle them in the meshes of the Queen s Sovereignty." It is worth while here to glance at Sir George Grey as seen by the late Sir William Pcinber Reeves (Encyclopaedia Britaimica):— "In 1845, when the little settlements in New Zealand .were involved in a native war, he was ,sent to save them. The Maori chiefs made their submission. The Governor gained the veneration of the Maori tribes, in whose welfare: he. took a close personal interest, and of whose legends and myths he made a valuable and scholarly collection, published in New Zealand in 1855 and reprinted thirty years afterwards,

CONSTITUTIONAL PHASE,

"Grey presently became involved in harassing the disputes with the colonists, who- organised an active" agitation for autonomy. In the end a constitution partly framed by Grey himself was granted them, and Grey, after eight years of despotic but successful rule, was transferred to Cape Oolonly. ... In 1861 the Colonial Office sent him as Governor to NewZealand, where an inglorious native war in Taranaki had just been succeeded by an armed truce. Grey did liis best to avert, war,; but it came in 1863, and spread from province to province. Ten thousand regulars and as many, colonial riflemen were employed tb put it .down. The Imperial troops were badly handled, and Grey, losing patience, became involved m bitter disputes with their commanders. As an example to the former he himself attacked and captured "Weraroa, the strongest of the Maori stockades, with a handful of militia, a feat which delightecl the colonists, but made him as much disliked at the War Office as he now was at Downing Street. Moreover, Grey had no longer real control over the islands. New Zealand had become a self-governing colony, and though he vindicated the colonists generally when libellous imputations of cruelty and land-grabbing were freely made against them in London, ho crossed swords with his Ministers when the latter confiscated three mli-Kon-acres of tribal land belonging to the insurgent Maori. Yet a condition, of something like tranquillity had been reached in 1867, when he received a curt intimation from the Duke of Buckingham that he was about to be superseded. The colonists bade farewell, to him in 1868 in'an outburst of gratitude and sympathy; but his career as a colonial governor was at an end." Yes, Grey's career as Governor had ended. '.Of his career in Parliament, what shall bo said?

KAWAU TO THOKNDON,

From His unique island home, Kawau Island, he was called into polities. "It was from this quiet retreat, among the great pohutukawa groves and the products of many a foreign land, that he was called forth to lead a party and shake up the dry bones of politics in Wellington (write* Mr. Cowan). He

was an inspiration to reform; his presence, .his eloquence, and. his. magnetic mana carried all before them —for a time. But that great burst of popularity, which followed on the successful apppeal of a deputation whicn waited on him at the Kawau, was chiefly confined to Auckland, where Grey always was a hero^, He was Premier of the colony for two years, 1877-79. ■ There is no space here to narrate the ex-Gover-nor's career as a fighting politician; but it may be summed up as a meteorlike life, 'full of flre and thrust. The veteran's last few years in politics wore a miserable dragging out of a great career; wiser of him. had he retired before his reputation and his popularity waned. Ho alienated' his supporters by his too-autocratic. methods, his obstinacy, his secretivoness,. his unreliability, his indifference -to the -views of others of his party. But: the sidelights on Grey as humanist; liis literary and artistic interests, his splendid, bequests to Auckland City, his friendship ivith scholars and scientists, are the most pleasant things in retrospect." Beeves sums up the Parliamentary side of Grey by saying that in 1875, on the invitation of Auckland settlers, he became Superintendent of their Province, entered the House of Representatives, and became Premier in 1877. His leading policy points—manhood suffrage,, triennial parliaments, land tax, purchase of large estates^ —he did not carry but he lived to see them carried. Another of his leading points was popular election of the Governor. "For the fifteen years after the fall of his Ministry in 1879 he remained a solitary and pathetic figure in the New Zealand Parliament, respectfully treated, courteously listened, to, but never again invited to lead." ,