ostle queerly. An
official letter was put into the hands of Sir George Grey, as he stood on
the seashore at Wanganui, watching a skirmish in progress with the
Maoris. He seated himself, opened the envelope, and forgot the crack of
muskets in the document it contained. This was the first constitution for
New Zealand, and he was instructed to introduce the same. He didn't; only
that is a very red-letter tale. It should be told simply, as Sir George
Grey told it.

'In the middle of the turmoil at Wanganui,' he stated, 'out comes a
constitution which had been passed by the British Parliament, and
published in the "Gazette." It was, you understand, to be the instrument
under which the New Zealand people should take their full, free place in
the Empire. Up to that date they had not been self-governing; the
Governor ruled. Well, having studied it carefully where I sat, I arrived
at the conclusion that it would not do at all.

'Conceive my surroundings! There I was, with Maori chiefs whom I had
brought from Auckland and Wellington. They trusted me; they were helping
me all they could to bring about a peace. This constitution, I
discovered, would destroy, at one stroke, a treaty--that of Waitangi,
which every Maori in New Zealand held to be sacred. It was a treaty
securing them in their lands; it was their Magna Charta in every respect.
Yet the constitution would go back upon all that, and I should be held
traitor to every one of my pledges to the Maoris. Moreover, it would have
seemed as if I had taken the chiefs away from their various tribes, in
order that these might be the more readily despoiled of their lands.

'Its treatment of the Maoris made the constitution impossible, in my
judgment, and there were other far-reaching objections. It was formed on
the cast-iron methods of the Old World--the methods which, I held, ought
to be kept absolutely out of the New World. My motto might have been,
"Leave us to ourselves; let us try what we can contrive." What was I to
do with a constitution unjust to the bulk of the colonists, as well as to
the Maoris; a plan going tilt against the federation idea which I hoped
would, in future years, uprise in every country speaking the English
tongue?

'What was I to do indeed? My instruction was not alone that of the
Colonial Office; but the constitution had been sanctioned by Parliament.
A man's responsibility, in the largest sense, is, after adequate
deliberation, to proceed as he determ