Sir George Grey and the British Southern Hemisphere
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
TREATY RESEARCH SERIES TREATY OF WAITANGI RESEARCH UNIT ‘A Terrible and Fatal Man’: Sir George Grey and the British Southern Hemisphere Regna non merito accidunt, sed sorte variantur States do not come about by merit, but vary according to chance Cyprian of Carthage Bernard Cadogan Copyright © Bernard Cadogan This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without the permission of the publishers. 1 Introduction We are proud to present our first e-book venture in this series. Bernard Cadogan holds degrees in Education and History from the University of Otago and a D. Phil from Oxford University, where he is a member of Keble College. He is also a member of Peterhouse, Cambridge University, and held a post-doctoral fellowship at the Stout Research Centre at Victoria University of Wellington in 2011. Bernard has worked as a political advisor and consultant for both government and opposition in New Zealand, and in this context his roles have included (in 2011) assisting Hon. Bill English establish New Zealand’s Constitutional Review along the lines of a Treaty of Waitangi dialogue. He worked as a consultant for the New Zealand Treasury between 2011 and 2013, producing (inter alia) a peer-reviewed published paper on welfare policy for the long range fiscal forecast. Bernard is am currently a consultant for Waikato Maori interests from his home in Oxford, UK, where he live s with his wife Jacqueline Richold Johnson and their two (soon three) children. As well as an historian, he is a published poet. During his residence in Wellington in 2011 Bernard presented stimulating lectures on Treaty of Waitangi hermeneutics, Samuel Butler and George Grey. His work at the Stout Research Centre focussed on Grey, and this e-book, which has been edited by the author himself, resulted from that period of research. Since finishing this text, Bernard has also written Realm of Reconciliation – Paul Ricoeur, New Zealand and The Treaty of Waitangi, which will be published by in the USA by Lexington Books. Series Editors, September 2014. 2 Contents Page Acknowledgements 4 Preface 5 Abbreviations and Glossary 6 Chapter One The Policy of Sir George Grey 7 Chapter Two The Grey Family Background 26 Chapter Three Grey’s Formations 48 Chapter Four Grey the Explorer 80 Chapter Five The Port Louis Paper 113 Chapter Six “Measure for Measure” – Grey’s Governorship of South Australia 123 Chapter Seven New Zealand in 1845 131 Chapter Eight The Grey “Moment”? 162 Chapter Nine The New Zealand Constitution Act and the Constitution of Empire 190 Chapter Ten Grey and South Africa 209 Chapter Eleven South African Federation- Recall and Reinstatement 231 Chapter Twelve Responsible Government and the Irresponsible Governor 236 Chapter Thirteen The Last, The Loneliest and the Loveliest – Grey’s Return to New Zealand 256 Chapter Fourteen The Mask of Napoleon 282 Bibliography 300 3 Acknowledgements I have many acknowledgements to make for the support, financial assistance and for the friendship and collegiality that have made this book possible. In the first instance I wish to thank Hon Bill English, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of New Zealand, and Rt Hon Simon Upton for their unfailing support and interest in the development and writing of this work. Without their goodwill and vision, none of this would ever have been possible. I wish also to thank Sir Michael Cullen and Hon Trevor Mallard for their interest and for their considerable support during the Vth Labour Government, which prevented the project from vanishing altogether. I wish to thank my generous and patient benefactors for their confidence in the project and for helping me and my family with the fees and living costs. I gratefully acknowledge Mr David Wilson of Wellington, and Su Cullen, Chris Mace, and Ms Judith Hanratty for considerable assistance. I thank Dame Jennifer Gibbs, Dr Leo Buchanan, Mrs Mary Buchanan, Hon John Luxton, Colin James, Dr Eric Chin and Ms Nicola Roberts for their valuable help. I wish to acknowledge my friends and colleagues, the late Dr John Money, Richard Reeve, Bill Moran, Rodney Tamblyn, Richard Cross, Murray Watt, Adrian Kennedy, Dr Mark Hickford, Dr Hanno Scheuch, Alexander Haydon, Dr Salvador Venegas-Andraca, Dr Olympia Bobou, Kjetil Leon Bordvik, Dr Wing-Chung Fong, Alistair Henry, Hon Hugh Templeton and Sir Douglas Kidd, Associate-Professor Gordon Parsonson, and Nick at the Museum of Science. I wish to acknowledge the friendship of the late Professor W.H. McLeod. I wish to thank Keble College in the persons of Dame Averil Cameron the Warden, Mr Roger Boden the Bursar, and Dr Maria Misra. I especially thank my colleagues at the Victoria University of Wellington, Professor James Belich, Professor Lydia Wevers and Professor Richard Hill, who made me so welcome at the Stout Research Centre. I thank with deep gratitude my D. Phil thesis supervisor at Oxford, Dr John Darwin of Nuffield College, for his prudence, good judgement and wisdom. Above all I thank my wife Jacqueline for her total support for this project, and my parents Sean and Moira Cadogan for their generosity and help. 4 Preface This book is a study of Sir George Grey’s goverment and policy in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. It is an essay towards a project that keeps eluding us. In it I argue that Grey was an ethnographer and constitutionalist. Above all the political thought of James Harrington’s The Commonwealth of Oceana of 1656 inspired a public career of 60 years duration. Grey genuinely desired civic rights and equality for non-white and indigenous peoples. He was courageous at times in how he stood up for those rights. That future however would occur at the cost of indigenous self-determination and economic self-sufficiency. Non-white and indigenous peoples were to be absorbed into the settler colony. That led to appalling suffering and betrayal of trust, to the abuse of power, and to the dislocation of peoples over generations. It was not good for white settlers either, who were left with the prolonged fantasies of apartheid South Africa, “white Australia” and white dominion New Zealand. Grey himself paid heavily, in his career, in his health, and with the corruption that great power wrought on him. Like all of us however he came from a generation with limited horizons, as it pondered the future. The tragedy is that he was personally as humane at some stages of his career, and as consciously humanitarian in policy as anyone of that time could be in the great age of British global power. In other respects he could be a monster, entirely consumed by power, determined to make and remake nations. After his retirement from the Colonial Service, his behaviour in New Zealand politics could be pompous and farcical. The mystery is how some kind of moral mission remained with him into old age, growing stronger, as the appetite for power drained from him. This book has been written during the British riots of August 2011, while the New Zealand National Party Government and the Maori Party have been in an Agreement of Support, when the New Zealand Constitutional Review commenced, while the Australian Government prepares a constitutional referendum on Aboriginal rights, and while the A.N.C. leadership in South Africa engages in an internal debate over the future of South African race relations. There are lessons for us all in the evils of racial hegemony that Grey aspired to, and in his foreclosures of another people’s future. I finally note that I am just one in a long line of historians associated with the New Zealand Parliament who have written on Grey and New Zealand colonial history – whether Members, Officers of Parliament, officials and staff, from Alfred Saunders, William Gisborne, William Rees, William Pember Reeves, to James Collier, A.H. McLintock, and lately Mark Hickford. As a New Zealand historian, influenced by the Benedetto Croce’s demand that Liberalism incessantly reinvent itself, I offer this latest work on George Grey. 5 Abbreviations A.J.H.R. Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives. C.M.S. Church Missionary Society. G.B.P.D. Great Britain Parliamentary Debates. G.B.P.P. Great Britain Parliamentary Papers. K.C.B. Knight Commander of the Bath. N.Z.G.A. 1846 New Zealand Government Act 1846. N.Z.C.A. 1852 New Zealand Constitution Act 1852. Glossary of Maori Terms Hui a conference Kotahitanga “Unity” Movement, the movement towards Maori unification. Kingitanga “King” Movement, the movement for a Maori king. Mana the prestige, glory, reputation, fame of a person or persons; by extension their “authority” and sovereignty. 6 Chapter One The Policy of Sir George Grey Sir George Grey K.C.B. was the Governor of British Gondwanaland. To begin with the bald facts, Grey was born in Lisbon in 1812 and died in London in 1898. After co-commanding the Western Australian Exploratory party between 1837-39, he was appointed Governor of South Australia in 1840, served twice as Governor of New Zealand, between 1845- 53, and 1861-1868, and served as Governor of the Cape Colony and High Commissioner for Southern Africa between 1854-61. He was premier of New Zealand for two years between 1877- 1879, Superintendent of the Auckland Province 1875-76, and a Member of the New Zealand House of Representatives 1875-1890, 1891-95. He was made a Privy Councillor in 1894, was made a Commander of the Order of the Tower and Sword by Dom Pedro V of Portugal in 1860 for services to Mozambique, and even awarded the Order of St Pius, Third Class, by Pope Pius IX, for services to the Catholic missions, even though Grey himself was not a Catholic.