How New Zealand got its Constitution.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 936, 7 February 1890, Page 8

How New Zealand got its Constitution.

BY SIR WILLIAM FOX.

Section IV. It must have been ‘lllumination Day’ at Government House in Auckland when Lord Grey's despatch reached Governor Grey announcing that the * Act to Suspend for Five years the Operation of the Constitution Act ’ had passed the Imperial Parliament. The ghost of institutions Was laid in a quiet grave at Westminster, five fathoms deep, with the solid weight of an ImDerial Act of Parliament on the top of it. No* fear of the awful thing being ‘ resurreeted ’in Governor Grey’s time. We have already seen how, to make assurance doubly sure, he has taken the precaution of occupying the haunted chamber of the Colony with two live bodies of nominee legislators, who might, it was hoped, be trusted to fight for their privileges, and stand up in defence of that system which he had assured Lord Stanley ‘ would secure the tranquillity, prosperity, and happiness of the colony.’ But the best laid plans are not always infallible. It was not long till the ‘little rift within the Jute ’ began to show itself, when six out of the nine nominees* offended by Mr Eyre’s treatment* and by an intimatiou given by Lord Grey tb the Governor that he need not consider himself fettered by their opioibn on matters of finance, and so, finding themselves of no accotmt, resigned as described in my last article. It was impossible to find substitutes. LieutenantGovernor Eyre wrote : —-‘ I cannot conceal from myself that the present form of Council is so unpopular, and daily becoming more so, that there is little probability of the Government being able to induoe any other gentleman of sufficient character, standing, and ability to join it; the prevailing impression amongst the best educated and most portion of the oammunity being that it would neither reflect ere lit on themselves nor enable them to serve the public usefully by becoming members of a Legislature which* under the present Con stitution, is so distasteful to the public generally.’ If Sir George drey had been wise he would have let things be, and not have provoked further disaster. He began to sit between two stools, and, like most who try that experiment, he came to the ground. The colonists, as will be . presently described, were getting restless and dangerous, and he determined apparently to stop their mouths by ‘throwing a sop to Cerberus.’ He summoned together at Wellington the Legislative Council of New Zealand, which apparantly consisted of the old Auckland Council, and as much of the Wellington Provincial Council as was left, making 14 members in all—the Lieutenant-Governor, two Secretaries, two Attorney. Generals, two Land Commissioners, (he Commander of the Ttoops, a Collector of Customs, a Treasurer, and four unofficial colonists, nominated by the Governor. Some of them the Governor boasted had travelled hundreds of mileß to be present. Before this august body he laid a Bill for the creation of a new sort of Provincial Council, consisting of one-third nominees and officials, and two-thirds of elected members—elected on a property franchise. This ordinance, however, did not pass without opposition. Lieutenant Governor F.yre, who was a member of the Council, stoutly opposed it on the very sensible ground that, however appropriate it might have been three years before, when Lord Grey’s constitution was suspended, it was now altogether two late to be meddling when the term of suspension had nearly elapsed, and the Imperial Government would soon no doubt be dealing with the whole question ©f representation. The nominees, however, obeyed orders, and passed the ordinance, and the Governor with a reckless haste issued three proclamations to carry it into effect. Lord Grey, however, summarily disallowed the ordinance as being ultra vires, the proclamation had to be cancelled, and the Government of the Colony continued under that system which was ‘to secure its tranquillity, prosperity, and happiness,’ but which unfortunately did not do it.

The Colony had all this time been kept very much in the dark as to what was passing between the Governor and the Colonial Office. It was only from the blue books of the Imperial Parliament, in which were printed occasionally some of the Governor's despatches and the replies of the Colonial Office, and then at very long intervals, that anything transpired as to what was being done or not done. Even the New Munster nominee Council, in December, 1848, began, like Oliver Twist, ‘asking for more, 1 and by a solemn resolution called on the Governor ‘ to declare at once what he was goiug to recommend, and whether he was going to take any steps to secure the adoption of representative Government at an early period.’ Karly in 1849, petitions to the Imperial Parliament were sent from the Suuthern Provinces, asking that Representative Insti. tutiona should at once be given, -‘ in opposition; as the Governor himself remarked, to the views he had expressed in his despatches.’ Before the middle of the year 1549, ‘ Settlers’ Constitutional Associations ’ simultaneously but independently, sprang into existence in every settlement, having at their back 3 fourfifths of all the colonists. They went systematically to work ; held large and frequent meetings in all the principal towns (one of them at Nelson sat for thirteen consecutive hours, from noon till 1 next morning) ; they dissected, criticised, and replied to the various despatches of the Governor, and the Colonial Office, as they reached them ; and they carried the war into the enemy’s camp, and exposed in detail from time to time, the frequent and arbitrary acts of which the Governor was guilty. They kept him very busy forwarding these memorials to Lord Grey, accompanied, of course, by counter documents, in which ho sought to excuse himself. He must have found out by this time that ‘the tranquillity and happiness’ which he had promised as the result of his absolute Government were by no means realised in his own person. Had the struggle been to be fought out between the colonists on one side and fair

George Grey and the Colonial Office on the other, there is little doubt that he would have, got the best of it. But there were growing up one or two considerable forces in the Old Country which gave the colonists what they had never had before to any great degree, the opportunity of influencing the public mind, and that of leading statesmen not under the influence of the Colonial Office. One of these was the Canterbury Association, whose headquarters were in Loudon, and whose directory comprised many leading members of both Houses of Parliament and other active and influential politicians; The Settlers’ Constitutional Associations in the Colony took care to keep tbeie friends supplied with the numerous documents which emanated from them, and they very soon began to show fruit, which, if they had been confined to the Colonial Office, they would not have borne. One of the most important of these was the creation in London, in the summer of 1850, of a Colonial Reform League composed of very influential men, two of whose members C. B. Adderley, M.P., (now Lord Norton), and Sir William Moles worth, Bart., M.P . were appointed London agents for the Wellington Constitutional A»sociation, while a committee to correspond with them was appointed at Wellington, consisting of John Robert Godley, W. Fitgherbert, 3 C. Featberstodi W; LyOh, and W. Fox. It was not possible that the victory of the Colonists should bO very long delayed, and it was not. It is utterly impossible in the space at my disposal to giVe my raiders even the metest abstract Of the documents in which the war betwben the Governor and the colonists was carried on by means of the organisations referred to. Nor is it necessary for the question under discussion to do s®. But those who desire to understand the whole question and to form an independent opinion, have the original documents on which I have founded my statements so far, within their reach. For many years they were only to be found scattered through several volumes of Imperial Parliamentary Blue-books, without any sort of continuity or connection. We owe it to Sir John Hall that they were at la t collected and reprinted in theappendis to the ‘Journals of theHouseof Representatives, ISS3,’ vol. 1., papers, a 3 and a3A, which are in the Auckland Free Library. They occupy 216 folio pages, of 1000 words to the page, and the perusal of them is no light task. It is rendered the more laborious by the extreme prolixity which is a distinguishing feature of many of those which passed between the Governor and the Colonial Office, and Which makes the task of reading them, as someone has said of legal studies, very like eating eawdußt without butter, it has often occurred to me, in reading documents of this sort, that the correspondents engaged in them must mutually have thought each other the stupidest of men, and only to be taught by constant reiteration. Pages upon pages are consumed in the elaboration of ideas which, to the comprehension of a man with any grip in his brain, might have been expressed in a few concise sentences. The documents emanating from the Settlers’ Associations, however, are not open to this objection ; they have all the life and reality of men who felt that they were fighting for what was both real and vital. I must not, however, leave the subject of Sir George Grey’s despatches without, noticing one feature which all along- afforded him a facile, but most unfair, method of biassipg the minds of successive Secretaries of State against the bestowal of Representative Government. I refer to the continual recourse which he had to what Jeremy Bentham calls the ‘ Hobgoblin argument,’ by parading in terrorem the peril which might result from colonists ‘arousing the natives,’ bringing on wars, or otherwise illtreating them. As Mr J. E. Fitz Gerald once observed in a letter to Lord Cardwell. ‘Amidst all the colonists have suffered, there is nothing more galling than to see Sir George Grey earning a great and illdeserved reputation for humanity at their expense.' He never ceased to keep this imaginary contingency before the eyes of the Secretaries of of State, and with a paralysing effect. Hia experience might have, taught him, and further experience confirms it. thfit all the wars with the natives, from Fitzroy’s with Heki at the Bay of Islands to tne great Waikato war and its continuations which lasted mere than a dozen years, were Governors’ and not colonists wars, The colonists in various documents had occasion to complain, and did bitterly complain, of the use made by Sir George of this unfair method of misrepresentation. For the facts which I have so far related I have relied mainly on the documentary evidence contained in the collection of papers above referred, to, occasionally supplemented —or, rather, explained—by my personal knowledge. In wnat remains co be said, and which will record the final stages which were transacted in England, I shall speak both from personal experience aod from the reports of Parliamentary debates in the English Hansard. I returned to England in 1851, and remained there till I saw the Constitution Act safely through the Imperial Parliament.

(To be continued.)