OLD TIMES AND OLDTIMERS

Otago Witness, 1 June 1910, Page 89

OLD TIMES AND OLDTIMERS

PREPAEING FOE SELF-GOVEEN-MENT. By H. H. Ltjsk. In the first stages of the development of a colony as young as New Zealand was in the early fifties, there wasn't a great deal of what is generally understood as government required. The little handfulls of settlers who were dotted at long intervals along the coast, didn't need much keeping in order, for most of them were a law to themselves, and as a rule, they were perfectly willing that somebody should do the governing for them, as long as they didn't interfere with them too much, or tread on their toes too often. As a matter of fact, the first ten years of New Zealand's history was disturbed by only two serious matters; the relations between the Maoris and the colonists—including, of course,, the purchase of Native lands in the north; and the relations between the New Zealand Company and the settlers they had brought to the colony in the central and southern districts. The first had been a serious difficulty, leading to bloodshed in the country itself, and to discredit in England, which made the work of settlement slow and difficult; the second had created and kept alive for years a great deal of dissatisfaction in the settlements founded by the company, and practically ruled by the company's agents and officers. Native affairs, and Native land purchases, had caused the downfall of one Governor, who under lees difficult circumstances might have proved an excellent ruler, but they had been taken hold of by his successor with a strong hand, which wanted no assistance, and would certainly have permitted no interference, on the part of the colonists. The same hand had practically swept away the other difficulty, by getting rid of the New Zealand Company and its servants altogether. Sir George Grey, who may be said to have been at once the first and last independent and practically autocratic Governor of New Zealand, like every member of his class known to history, has made many enemies, and been the subject of a great deal of bitter criticism. As is usually the case, some of this was probably deserved, while a good deal of it was not. As a matter of fact, he illustrated admirably the truth of an old German proverb, quoted by a leading missionary of the Church Missionary Society, who was himself a German at the time^—" Zere iss nefer von ver big candel, but it bass von big schnuff." New Zealand's first full-blown and successful Governor was—as all of us who knew him well, would have testified—what the German missionary would have called " Von ver big candel," politically speaking; so it is needless to say he had a few snuffs of his own. It had been Grey's fortune, good or bad, to be an " emergency man " wherever he had gone, whether as the early explorer of West Australia, the man 6ent to save South Australia from impending failure, or the one chosen to drag the infant colony of New Zealand out of the difficulties that threatened to destroy it in its first six years of existence. Sir George Grey had several very marked qualities that make for greatness, especially in such a career as his. He was emphatically a man who knew his own mind, and who kept it to itself, -unless he thought it would pay better to communicate it or some of it—to other people. He was a man who had wide sympathies but he was also one who never by any chance allowed those sympathies to interfere with the course which he had deliberately decided on as the best from a public point of view. He was a man who looked far ahead, and yet he was also one who was keenly observant of things near at hand. Finally it may be said, of him with perfect truth that he was a thoroughly convinced believer in democratic government' and yet one whose individual practices were frankly and even extremely autocratic. In this way he presented to those who knew him at all well during his public life a succession of paradoxes and inconsistencies that formed a continual puzzle—interesting, it is true, but sometimes, to say the least, annoying. By the time the young colony had passed. its tenth year matters had begun to settle down. The land troubles in both islands had come to an end—at least for the time, —and the dread of Native wars, . even in the north, was dying away. . The steps by which all this had been brought about were not popular with everybody, but everybody felt that they had been successful. The Native lands that had been bought by the New Zealand Company from the Maoris, making it the great landlord of the country, had, become Crown lands; nearly all the land in the South Island had been secured for settlement, and even in the north more than enough land had been bought to provide for the settlers for years to come. The beginning of better times was already being felt in both islands in the first two years of the fifties, and people began to have time as well as inclination to think and talk of many things tbey_ had not thought of before. The questions that began to be of most interest to intelligent settlers were no longer confined to their every day work : they were beginning to think of the future. This feeling was already in the air of Auckland when I landed there. Something had already been done by the Governor and his Council to make a beginning of self-government for the colonists. At first, of course, the Governor-in-Council had done all that was done by way of government. They Jnade regulations, just as they made roads, without consulting the people for whom they were made. In this way there were ordinances, that were really laws, to prevent cattle straying on the roads and even coming into town as they sometimes did. There were ordi-

nances about dogs in the town—of course it was called a city, because it was the capital,—and even about lights in the streets after dark. Within the last year .or two the people, both in town and country, had begun to think, and even to say, that they could manage these things as welt or'better for themselves. Fortmnately the Governor was of the same opinion; and the ordinances began to take the shape of giving the people both' in the city and the little country districts round "to look after their own affairs.

Governor G re y> however, was not a man to content himself with doing what was needed for the moment, and from the time he had first come, and begun to understand the kind of country he had to deal with, he had set himself the task of solving the problem how it could best be governed in the future, when instead of 18,000 or 20,000 inhabitants, it would have millions of people. The problem interested Sir George Grey deeply, both as a strong and practical ruler, and as a convinced believer in popular government. Here was the very country in which absolutely' popular government could be tried with the best prospects of success; but it was also a country which in the first instance would present a good many new problems. It had been settled, so far, by people of different kinds, and with very different ideas of what they wanted to make of it; and it was almost certain that for a long time to come these differences would continue. It was also going to be a country settled at wide intervals of space by people whose needs, as well as their conditions, would, for a long time probably, be different. The problem under these circumstances was, What sort of government would suit it best and develop it most healthily?''' This was the question which Sir George Grey set himself to answer, and it was the origin of the peculiar Constitution of New Zealand, which came into force in 1853. The Constitution under which New Zealand lived during that part of its history when it was in the making was not hastily worked out. It took several yeare before it left Grey's hands, and was sent to the Cabinet in London for its approval before being presented to the British Parliament. Originally Grey framed it on the lines of the Constitution of the United States of America, as being the country whose conditions had at first been most like our own. The provinces were to have practically the same powers that the States had in America; the Assembly the powers reserved by the American Constitution to the National Congress; and the Upper Chamber of the New Zealand Parliament was to be elected by the Councils of the different provinces at intervals of . six years. ,It was this part of the Constitution that seemed to the authorities in Downing street too un-English, and quite too democratic for any English colony. It was consequently this part of the original Constitution that was cut out, for the purpose of substituting the weak and unsuitable imitation of the British House of Lords, which has done duty as an ornamental Chamber for more than half a century. When the new Constitution was passed into a statute by the British Parliament —we hadn't learned to use the unsuitable and almost meaningless name " Imoerial " then—drey's work, as he felt himself, was really done. He had come to the country at a time when it seemed to be an open question whether or not it could be made into a place in whicn a successful colony of British people could be established at all : he was ready to leave it to work out its destinies for itself; and he had practically bequeathed to it the means by which it could do so in the Constitution he had drawn up, even though it had been seriously injured by the introduction of a nominated Chamber, which made it possible to retard its progress in the years to come.