What happened? From his private means, Sir George made up, to the full amount, the instalment of salaries next due. It was a stroke which he had to repeat on a larger scale.

England raised a German legion for service in the Crimea, and, the war over, did not know what to do with the men. It was not considered wise to let them loose in England, and if they went back to Germany they might have to face the music of a drumhead court-martial. Cape Colony agreed to receive the Germans as military settlers; they would be planted, a row of defence, along the borders of Kaffraria. But the condition was attached that German families, into which the men might marry, should also be sent out.

When asked to perform the second part of the bargain, Downing Street said, 'Yes, we should like very much to do so, but we can't, for Parliament won't grant the money.'

This left the matter in an unfortunate state altogether. The German firm, managing the emigration of the families, reported to Sir George, 'The scheme must fall through, unless we have twenty thousand pounds at once.'

'I was in London,' Sir George mentioned, 'at the break between my two Governorships of South Africa. I went carefully into the matter, realising all that was at stake, and I gave the assurance, "You shall have the money this afternoon." I had never raised a large amount before, but I concluded that the place to go to was the City of London. I had several thousands with my bankers, on which I could lay hands, and I supposed they would enable me, by some method of interest, to get the remainder.

'On the road to the City I met a connexion of mine, also a banker. He asked me what I was about, and I told him. "Why don't you come to us?" he said. "I have no money with you," I replied; "and never had." "No," was his response; "but you need not pass us by in this matter. I should like to help you; come and draw a cheque for twenty thousand pounds."'

That cheque was drawn, and South Africa extracted from a grave social difficulty. The emigrants became an admirable settlement, and most honourably made good the outlay which they had occasioned. 'It wasn't banking, it wasn't business, that cheque,' Sir George was bantered long years after; 'but perhaps it was better.'

'Ah!' he laughed back, 'I'm benefiting myself now, for it seems that I returned thirty-eight shillings more than was due, and that therefore I have a balance to draw upon.'



XIII OCEANA AND THE PROPHETESS

Sir George Grey rode hard and far over the South African karoo, serving the Queen's writ in letters of gold. When he rode late, and the stars were ablaze, his saddle held a dreamer in dreamland.

What a lightsome new world! The sun had bathed it in the day; night brought another radiance. Here was the emblem of all the New World should be to the Old. Not yet, perhaps, in the full, for there were things to do, but soon, when the outposts of empire, stretching to Australia, New Zealand, and beyond, had come into their own. Yes, those glorious stars overhead were only meant to shine on a New World reflecting their brightness!

One winked, and Sir George smiled. Sir John Herschel had visited the Cape to fix the southern stars. The recollection carried Sir George Grey to the astronomer's part in quite a different affair. He had the tale from Herschel himself, and classed it with the somewhat relative incidents of Carlyle and Babbage. It was worse for the victim.

'Nevertheless,' said Sir George, 'his statement of it to me, was marked by much humour and enjoyment. It was the third example of my great men coming to grief through their tailor; anyhow, there lay a contributory cause. One might have moralised to Herschel on the subject of genius and clothes; I did better, I sympathised.

'Sir John, who was living near Windsor, had been up in London, and was to return home for dinner. It occurred to him that he might call somewhere in town, about certain magnetic instruments that were being made for him, and still reach Windsor by the dinner hour. So he set off to the place, carrying in his hand certain small parcels, the contents of which were probably intended for the dinner. Remembering his quaint figure, I confess I would have given something to see him scudding along the London streets on that occasion.

'Well, when he had accomplished a good part of the journey he asked himself, "Can I do it after all?" He took out his watch, in order to ascertain what time was left him. He found that the way had occupied him longer than he had calculated; in fact, it was clearly impossible that he could go on to the instrument-maker, and also get home for dinner. He had a small party of guests that evening, and thus his punctual arrival was imperative. Having considered the dilemma for a minute, he wheeled about, satisfied that he must give up his mission if he would not spoil the dinner party. He started back in a great hurry, and at once the cry was raised, "Stop thief! Stop thief!"

'It appeared that a policeman, full of suspicion, had been watching the not very fashionable bearer of the parcels. When Sir John came to his sudden halt, this fellow reasoned, "Ah! he observes me; my suspicions are confirmed." There could be no manner of doubt, on Sir John setting to run in the opposite direction. The policeman shouted, "Stop thief!" and rushed after the astronomer, a tail of curious people gathering from all sides. Sir John jogged on, heedless of the noise, ignorant of its cause, until the policeman brought him up. What was the matter? The man of the law looked awful things, and kept a stern eye upon his prisoner, for that was now Sir John's position.

'He explained that he was hurrying home for dinner, that his wife and friends would be waiting him, and that to be detained in such fashion was a trifle absurd, especially as he was Sir John Herschel. "Sir John Herschel!" quoth the policeman; "that's your game, is it? No, no, my friend; you'll have to come to the police-station with me." And away he marched the most eminent astronomer of many a year.

'At the station Sir John could only protest his identity anew, and that his account of the parcels was correct. The officials, secure in their man, commended him on his report of himself, which, they joked, was capital. Sir John Herschel! A brilliant idea! In the end Sir John had to send for friends who could vouch for him, and who were amazed at his plight. With many expressions of regret for the blunder, the police then allowed him to depart. He was late, to be sure, for dinner, but the worst of it was that he had no excuse to offer; at all events he had none which he cared, then and there, to communicate to his wife and guests.'

Nobody likes to be haled before the world at a disadvantage, as Sir John Herschel was in the above experience. People, great and small, naturally wish to appear fairly in the sight of others. Anything else, were to count out a human instinct which Sir George Grey utilised, when he visited the Kaffir chief Sandilli. Sir George discovered the innocent ways, by which the kingdom of civilisation could be advanced, to be a surprising number. Moreover, they were the most effective.

Sandilli was a chief of wide influence, and as yet had not quite taken to the new order of native administration. When the Governor walked into his kraal, a full-rigged dance was in progress. Sandilli himself was leading it, and he stopped for a minute in order to welcome the visitor. 'Then he went on, more merrily than ever,' Sir George described, 'in order that I might witness how well he could dance. He wished to impress me, to show me that here was a chief, strong, agile, graceful, a Kaffir of true kingly parts. The natives were grouped in a great circle, and the ground almost shook while they danced. They sang as they leapt about, and what they sang was "It burns! It burns! It burns!" until you could almost feel the glow of fire about you. They were, in imagination, burning the kraals of some other tribe with whom they had a quarrel. "It burns! It burns! It burns!" I can hear them still, and realise how easily, in such a condition, they could have been led to do anything. It was fanaticism a- brew.'

The dance over, there followed business with Sandilli. He made certain requests, with which the Governor was not able to agree. It was necessary to reserve them, but this must be done in such a manner that Sandilli would not be offended.

'You know,' Sir George enjoined him, 'that a child born into the world is long before it can distinguish its parents from other persons, and longer still before it can distinguish friends from foes. As yet, I am almost a new-born child in this country, and can answer no matter hurriedly. Hence, let all affairs be submitted to me in writing, and no mistakes can possibly arise.

Sandilli and his headmen were disappointed, for they liked quick results in their diplomacy. Noting this, the Governor whipped the talk to thoughts agreeable to them. He carried them off in a happy flight, and their faces changed from gloom to mirth. When he had ridden from the kraal, and they could reflect, it was perhaps in the sense, 'We cannot quarrel with that Governor whatever may happen. He gives us no chance, but, on the contrary, entertains us.'

While Sir George Grey was King of the Cape, Moselekatsi was King of the Matabele, and the two exchanged greetings and gifts. 'Moselekatsi,' Sir George remarked, 'had left the Zulus, and set up a new nation. We never met personally, but we were on very good terms. In those days there was a great hunter in South Africa, an Englishman who had come from India, and he presented Moselekatsi with a coveted uniform. It was of the old- fashioned kind, with bulky epaulettes on the shoulders; and what must Moselekatsi do, but remove them from there and add them to the tails! A humorous picture he must have made, in his distorted white man's finery.'

In South Africa Sir George had the companion-ship of Colenso, as in New Zealand he had that of Selwyn, He likened them to each other, in their simple sincerity of nature, in their devotion to the ministry, and in their elevated ideals. They dined with those they were up-bringing in the Christian faith, sitting at the head of the table, and they were complete shepherds of the flock. As Selwyn had been a walker, Colenso was a horseman, making a handsome figure in the saddle. He and Sir George would cover many a mile of veldt, eager in talk upon a Scriptural subject. It was thus when they first met, that being under the roof of Samuel Wilberforce, the famed Bishop of Oxford. Sir George had a hunting incident of Wilberforce. On one occasion he was having a gallop with him across, the green English country. Turning a corner, they met a pack of hounds, which had lost the scent and were trying to recover it.

Said Wilberforce to Sir George, 'As. a bishop I have no business to go into the field, but my two boys have just donned red coats to-day, and I want to see them very much. You must, therefore, lead me into the field, not to follow the fox, but that I may note my boys among the company.'

It may have been in return for this service, that Wilberforce handed on to Sir George a vaunted cure for sleeplessness. The Bishop suffered, now and then, from that canker of a busy life, and some person offered to send him a sure remedy, on receipt of one sovereign, no more. Wilberforce invested, not expecting to get much, and in that not being disappointed. 'He was instructed,' Sir George bore witness, 'to imagine a flock of sheep making for a gap in a wall. Then, as he lay sleepless on his pillow, he was to watch the leader jump the gap, and count the other sheep, one by one, as they followed. The undertaking: was that before the last sheep had cleared the gap, sleep should woo him. Nothing new, you see!

'But, having paid his sovereign the Bishop fancied that he might try the notion, and he did so. He confessed, with amusement, that the remedy had not done him any good, and enjoined that I might experiment without pre- payment. To carry on the fun I did this, and upon my word I think the remedy helped me once or twice. It was rather unfair to the Bishop that I should reap the harvest of his sovereign.'

There were to be sleepless nights for Sir George, arising from an event which he believed to be unique in history. Some of the Kaffir chiefs, especially the older ones, saw a danger signal in the lamp of native progress. To them, it denoted the rising power of the white, before whom all black men would be driven out. These fears were magnetised into a great upheaval, at the word of a young Kaffir girl turned prophetess. She uprose, a dark but comely Maid of Orleans, a Messiah to her people and her message swept Kaffraria like a wind.

As any maiden might have done, Nongkause went to fetch a pitcher of water. Most maidens, when they filled the pitcher, would have seen the shadow of a sweetheart in the eddies. Nongkause saw more. Strange beings, such as were not then in Kaffraria, were about her, and strange sounds fell upon her ears. The remote ancestors of the Kaffirs were revealing themselves; their spirits were consulting on the affairs of men.

Nongkause hurried to tell her uncle Umhlakaza, and, he helped to proclaim the visions. To him and to others they were, no doubt, expected, and certainly they were welcome. For what was their message? Nongkause had it from the council of spirits, sitting under the water, a corner of which lifted to allow of communication.

Disease was making itself felt among the cattle that formed the main wealth of the Kaffirs. However, the heroic chiefs who had long gone hence, were only waiting to return with endless herds. These were of vastly improved breed, nor could any earthly sickness harm them. From the unknown, there would also arrive all manner of desirable things; no Kaffir could even imagine them. Finally, those who were to bring the lustrous Kaffraria would march before a giant army. By it, the white would be driven into the sea, and Kaffir rule would direct a Kaffir land.

It was a queen's speech, indeed, that Nongkause put forth; yet there were conditions attached. Before anything could happen, the Kaffirs must destroy their own cattle, grain, and other belongings, to the uttermost. The chief who had many oxen must slaughter them, and throw the bodies to the wild beasts. The clansman who had a little store of corn must straight way destroy it. Even the kraals, which gave shelter from the elements, were to be burned down, as if an enemy were being pillaged. Otherwise the new heaven would not appear; while the starry heaven above, would fall and destroy the disobedient.

'When I heard of the movement,' Sir George Grey narrated, 'I at once hurried north to grapple with it. I could not have believed it so serious, until I was actually on the spot. Kaffraria was in a ferment, and a wave of destruction might roll from it across Cape Colony. Here were nearly a quarter of a million of Kaffirs, a large proportion of whom were busy acting upon the advice of the prophetess. They were destroying their cattle and produce, and looking forward eagerly to a triumph over the whites.

'I went among the chiefs, although warned that I endangered myself unduly, hoping to check the movement. However, it was useless to talk to natives aflame with superstition and passion. Those who doubted the prophetess, would do nothing to keep within bounds the majority who accepted her as a divinity. Yet, the chiefs invariably received me with kindness, and thanked me for the counsel I gave them. Simply, they could not accept it.'

The Governor adopted every means to place the borders of Cape Colony in a state of military security. As one detail he had to ensure that, in the event of war, the frontier settlers should not be massacred. A line of men was drawn across country, so as to make a buttress against any advance by the crazy Kaffirs. Each picket had charge of a stretch of ground, and in the morning soldiers would ride sharply to right and left, covering it. They could tell, by footmarks on the dewy grass, whether any Kaffirs had been about in the night. The chief military officer was for falling back upon a less extended position, where he believed he could be more secure. He sought the Governor's authority for the step, which fact well indicates the critical nature of the whole situation. Sir George scribbled an emphatic 'No,' and resumed the scanty sleep from which he had been aroused.

'I had several reasons,' he explained, 'for declining to permit of any change of our military position. First, it would have been an encouragement to the Kaffirs to attack us, for they would have supposed us in retreat. Second, we should have been leaving open, country where there were European families. Again, the appearance of weakening, on our part, would have driven over the Kaffirs who hesitated, to the side of those who clamoured to attack us. I made it a rule always, and in all things, only to take a step after the most careful and mature thought; but once it had been taken, never to go back upon it. It's a very bad business when you begin to retreat.'

Nothing happened in the manner Nongkause and the wily Umhlakaza had foretold, unless the destruction of Kaffir stock and grain. Two blood-red suns did not flame in the east; neither did the moon, in any of her humours, light the ancient chiefs along, the now precious cattle with them. A mist came up of an afternoon, but no day of darkness followed. Breezes blew, cheering the hot air to freshness; never a hurricane which should break the lintels of the white man's doors. It was weary to wait and starve, with a Governor on the flank, plucking all guidance out of an insurrection.

If the gods of Nongkause had excited a less perfect trust, there might have been a rush on Cape Colony. As it was, the belief lived long enough in the Kaffirs to defeat its own purpose. Their suffering grew acute, nature asserted itself over superstition, and their one cry was 'Give us to eat.' They dug up roots, and they strove for the supplies which the Governor threw into the country, when famine drove Nongkause's nostrum out. Desperate crowds of the hungry surged over hill and plain, while strength lasted, and then lay down to die. No question remained of keeping a mad Kaffraria at bay. The whole effort was to rescue, as far as was possible, the Kaffirs from death by want.

Civilisation drove forward in a mortuary cart; but it was civilisation. The spirit of Kaffraria had been quenched; it was a last wild stand. Sir George Grey meditated on the means, so unexpected, so beyond man's control, which had enhanced the securities for peace in South Africa. He could do that, believing Providence to be an all-wise, if often inscrutable ruler, and at the same time declare: 'There was a heroic element in the action of the Kaffirs, for we see what they were willing to endure at the bidding, as they believed, of their ancestors, and in the interests of themselves as a people.'

It was in Sir George's mind that Nongkause, by a queer irony, was the one member of her family who survived the visitation.



XIV A SAVIOUR OF INDIA

It touches the imagination to have a dark Africa put forward as light for a Bible scene; namely, that where Jacob, instructed by Rebekah, obtains the blessing which the blind Isaac thinks himself to be conferring on his eldest son Esau.

'This scene,' said Sir George Grey, 'did not live wholly to me, until I met with an incident while hunting in South Africa. Coming upon a young spring-buck, which had been exhausted by the pursuit, I lifted it into the saddle before me, and carried it home. All the way, the velvety skin of the little fellow was brushing against my clothes.

'These were not worn again for some time, and when I did take them out, I was struck by their delicious smell of herbs and grasses. The scent had been communicated by the spring-buck, accustomed to make its home among the sweet growths of nature. It was the hunter's fragrant smell which, in part, caused Isaac to mistake Jacob for Esau.'

While trekking through Cape Colony, to see everybody and everything for himself, Sir George was often able to be the keen sportsman. Before his camp was awake, of a morning, he would make a bowl of black coffee, shoulder his rifle, and start off, with a couple of bush-boys for gillies. He would return in the forenoon, deal with his work as Pro- Consul until the evening, and then, perhaps, seek another shot. Or, if his people were on the move, he might sally from them at one point, and rejoin them later. Deer of various sorts were not scarce, and he kept the camp larder furnished with fresh meat. The Mahomedans, among his motley following, ate with relish the product of his rifle.

'They trusted me,' he dwelt on that, 'to say "In the name of the Lord," when a beast was killed, so observing the Mahomedan rite. They would not have eaten of its flesh, had they not known that their belief was expressed, "You are not to destroy one of the Creator's creatures, except by His permission." Whenever Mahomedans were with me, I undertook to observe the rule, nor did I ever fail.'

One. sees, in that fact of chance mention, another evidence of how Sir George came to be such a force among the raw men of the earth. He had the genius for taking pains to understand them, and thus, even unwittingly, made them his disciples. Just, he touched the spot.

In his reign at the Cape, the lion was still rampant far south of the Zambesi. Twice, while hunting, he got on the trail of the monarch, but he never slew him. A leopard would skulk into the demesne of Table Mountain itself, and be ingloriously trapped. The lion made other sport, lying on a high place while it was day, and going forth to roam at dark. Sir George went to the Bible for the character sketch of the lion, in particular to the Psalms:

Thou makest darkness, and it is night; Wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth. The young lions roar after their prey, And seek their meat from God: The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, And lay them down in their dens.

There was a hill, with a wide outlook of plain, and from it, the lesser wild animals at feed, might be marked for the gloaming. It was covert wherein the lion could abide, to lie in wait, a secret lurking-place. Up the back of this hill climbed Sir George, eye and ear on the alert, for one suspected to be about. He was about, but already bounding down the rocky face of the ridge, in a hurry to be clear of the hunter. Sir George mounted his horse, eager to cut him off, and rode, break-neck, the path he had already climbed. There the lion galloped, at a kingly swing, heading for the thick bush in the distance. As he neared it, Sir George aimed a forlorn shot, which proved a farewell salute. He dismounted, and waded through the growth, to the concern of his Kaffir boy, but the lion was tracked no more.

These excursions of a leisure hour sent Sir George fresh, vigorous, full of resource to the alarums that arraigned him in South Africa. The greatest of them was not South African, but blew across the Indian Ocean. On an August morning, a steamer drew wearily into Table Bay with a message for the Governor. It was an express from Lord Elphinstone at Bombay, red-bordered, in that it told of the tremendous affair now calmly fixed in history as the Indian Mutiny. Here was an earnest cry, 'Come over and help us,' addressed to the potent British satrap nearest in the Seven Seas.

'Yes,' Sir George mentioned, 'the despatch was in no wise positive as to the outlook in India. Trouble there had been and would be; that was certain. But was India merely face to face with a disturbance which she could manage herself, or was it a widespread mutiny? I was really left to form my own view upon the situation, and I decided that things were very serious. Apparently, religious motives were at the bottom of the affair, and I could fancy how fanaticism, bred thereon, might sweep India. My responsibilities in South Africa were great, for the mad Kaffir movement had hardly been stayed; nay, my whole surroundings were as a thicket of thorns, in their possible complications. But India, which might be lost to us, outweighed everything else, and I felt it my duty to contribute assistance to the utmost limit of my resources.'

He would ship troops, guns, munitions, specie, everything South Africa could give, off to India. While he was doing it, a more splendid thing happened—his masterful laying hands upon the troop-ships passing the Cape for China, and his sending of them to India instead. 'I have;' he recorded the act at the time, 'directed that all vessels arriving here with troops for China, shall proceed direct to Calcutta instead of to Singapore.' They are laconic words, but their place is over the front door of the British Empire. To it they brought a service, not ordinary in its annals, as they marked a man willing to put all to the touch. A nation and a personality are in the incident, and, remembering that, let us trace it out.

At this date we had a variance with China, and were undertaking warlike operations in that country, jointly with France. Troops from England were hurrying to Lord Elgin, who was seeing our affairs through in China. Some of the transports reached Cape Town, a few days after Sir George Grey received the Elphinstone message. They needed water and fresh provisions, and receiving these would have gone on with all haste to China. It was a throbbing moment for a Cape Governor, accustomed to think in the British Empire. What should he do?

You can fancy him working out his course, like a master mariner taking the stars. Nor, must the process occupy longer. He was rapidly despatching the forces which were at his command in South Africa. This might prove rash, having regard to the state of the country. Events might confuse him, and be his downfall. Still, he was not going beyond the bounds of his commission, and there were the specious reasons why South Africa should fly to the aid of India.

He set them out then, and their reperusal, in the armchair of his London retirement, but emphasised their purport. As a great empire, set hither and thither, could only be governed by the free consent of all concerned, so it must be a unit when danger threatened any part. Here was the British Empire, a vast area, scattered over the globe. It was essential that everybody should see it had not overgrown its strength. Be manifest that its vitality, its power of action, were as keen at the extremities as at the centre. Should a portion be gravely endangered, the world must behold all the other sections stirring themselves to meet the emergency. Each should be a leader for the whole body, the supreme weight of which would thus be focussed upon the menaced quarter. In the process, our varied peoples would determine their common interests and a common pride of dominion, incalculable in worth.

Within this singleness of the Empire, came Colonel Adrian Hope and his gallant 93rd Highlanders, then at Cape Town on their way to China. Only, Sir George Grey's commission, as Cape Governor, gave him no authority to divert from its mission, an over-sea military expedition. He would be stepping outside his own realm with a vengeance, because he would be superseding the orders of the British Government. The contemplation of such a step was staggering. But would it be wisdom? That decided, it should go through, for Sir George did not bind himself by forms or consequences. Never being an official, than which no truer word could be writ, he was wont to give ready hostage to his official fortunes. India was to top all.

The meagre information from there, left him, as has been seen, to act very much on possibilities. These, however, were dark and storm-laden; he felt that England was confronted by her whole destiny in India. On the other hand, the operations in China were the result of a compact with France. To deflect troops elsewhere, might be a serious breach of that compact. It was so easy not to do anything; Sir George resolved to do everything.

'I informed Adrian Hope,' he described the result, 'of the apparent state of affairs in India, and of the course which seemed to me necessary. This was that he must proceed direct from Cape Town to Calcutta, instead of following his existing orders. Should there be no need for him at Calcutta, he could continue his voyage to Singapore, with a loss of time not material. Quite naturally, he was doubtful as to what he ought to do. He was under orders for a theatre of war, and was responsible to his superiors in London.

'I undertook the full authority for the change which I urged, and I remarked that unless he accepted my direction, it would most likely be refused by other officers arriving at Cape Town. He agreed to do as I wished, on condition that I put my commands in writing, and this I did at once. The noble fellow arrived in India in the nick of time, as did the forces which had previously left South Africa. Sir Colin Campbell was enabled, being so strengthened, to complete his expedition for the relief of Lucknow.

'I caused a steamer to cruise out from Cape Town, to intercept other troopships and send them on to China. While I was thus steadily forwarding relief to India, I learned that Canning, the Governor-General, was still hopeful of avoiding grave trouble. At that I was anxious lest, after all, I had misjudged the situation and the demands upon myself to meet it. Next, I had full tidings from India, and I knew that my efforts, twice over, would have been useful. India was in the balance.'

Sir George had to keep the peace in turbulent Kaffraria with a mere remnant of soldiers. The colonists, anxious to assist the relief of India, took sentry-go at Cape Town in place of the regulars. It was all a knitting of the Empire; the uniting of its strands by blood and bone and sentiment; that federation, based on race and the human qualities, which had budded and bloomed in Sir George Grey's mind.

'For instance,' he wrote from Cape Town, 'there is not one of the gentlemen in this part of the country who will now, in his turn, abandon his bed, to sleep for the night in the guard-house, and to walk his beat as sentry, who will not think that he has made some sacrifice for Her Majesty's honour and for the safety of even a distant part of the Empire, and who will not henceforth regard any persons that assail the interests of the Queen, or her possessions, very much in the light of personal antagonists. In fact, all here now feel that they are useful members of a great body corporate, in which they have their personal interest, which arises from having made some sacrifices to promote the common good of the whole. Such a feeling, pervading the Empire, must immeasurably increase its strength, unity, and stability.'

Sir George sent his own carriage horses to India, there to be yoked to smoking guns, and went afoot in Cape Town. The maintenance of peace, among the pugnacious chiefs of South Africa, depended mainly upon his personal influence with them. He borrowed horses and rode round among those chiefs, binding them over, in their only recognisances, as honourable men, not to disturb the country. It was a strange Pax Britannica; an affair of novel, almost quixotic, elements. But it went through royally.

'You know,' one fancies Sir George delivering himself during his circuit of the kraals, 'the Queen, for whom I speak, has to quell a rising which threatens all that is good in one of her other possessions. Those who fight against her are of exceeding number, while her forces there are comparatively few. Now, you are all warriors of experience who, if there must be fighting, would like to see a fair contest. In England the Queen has many soldiers, but England is as far again from India as we are. Thus, I can send troops from here in less time, and I am doing so, relying upon you, as gentlemen, to see that the peace is kept while they are away. With you, therefore, I leave that trust, mindful that we are all subjects of a Queen who loves those who serve her loyally, but who, when justly angered, can strike heavily.'

The velvet glove, fastening with the steel button, was gladly taken up by the chiefs, nor did they betray the Governor's confidence. His invasion of Moshesh, in this relation, was quite an exploit, for the old fellow was stern and wily. Sir George had brought about the cease fire, in a quarrel between the Basutos and the Boers. That gave him the prestige which was requisite for anyone who would go to Thaba Bosigo. Having a Boer for guide, and a few natives for retinue, the Governor presented himself at the outer postern of the stronghold, after darkness had fallen.

'I was admitted,' he said, 'and found Moshesh ill in bed, a bright nightcap, with a tassel, on his head. A more strange, more picturesque conference, bearing upon the well-being of the British Empire, surely never took place. Moshesh was propped up in his bed, his leading men grouped themselves round, and we talked. A fire burned in the place, a tallow candle or two spluttered, making lights and shadows as in a Rembrandt picture. My natives understood Basuto and English, and were the medium for my converse with Moshesh. He was really one of the cleverest fellows in all South Africa, as well as one of the most powerful chiefs. Thus, I was pleased with myself when I left Thaba Bosigo, no longer a Mountain of Midnight, knowing that he was in my league of peace.'

This novel covenant was strictly observed by the chiefs, so assuring the Governor against his neat venture. It hurled him, once more, through the fabric of the British constitution, a road to which he had grown familiar. What should he do but raise two regiments on his own mandate, a usurpation of the sovereign rights. It occurred in this fashion. Bombay had not taken the distemper, rife in such a large area of India. However, Lord Elphinstone learned that a Bombay rising had been arranged for a certain religious festival. He had not forces enough left him to overawe the populace, or, failing that, to cope with an outbreak. He despatched another express to Sir George Grey, at the Cape, to the effect: 'I know you have already denuded South Africa of troops, but I am hoping you may somehow manage to help us against this Bombay crisis.'

Sir George bethought himself of the men, formerly composing the German Legion, who were settled in the Colony. He collected these with what other recruits he could entice, formed them into regiments, and sent them to Bombay. 'I signed the commissions for the officers,' he recalled, 'but I'm afraid my signature would have meant nothing, after the ships were on the high sea. In the event of the men creating a disturbance, the officers would really have had no legal authority to quell it.' He communicated with the East India Company, desiring that the regiments should be put on a regular footing immediately they reached Bombay.

'For raising the regiments,' Sir George continued, 'I was charged at home with a breach of the constitution. It was all that. I got word that I should learn by a later mail what was to be the upshot. A friendly member of the Government wrote me a note beginning: "Dear Grey, you have done for yourself at last; I always feared it would come to this." My own position was very plain. Here was an unconstitutional thing, but a necessary thing.

'Meanwhile I had news from Bombay, that it was the provident arrival of the Germans which, most likely, prevented the outbreak that had been feared. I put the despatch in my pocket, with the reflection: "Ah, they can now interfere with me from London if they will!" There, I judged, they had similar information from Bombay, for I heard nothing farther as to what was to be done with me.

'When the first tidings of the trouble in India reached me, I laid it down that all previous orders and directions from England were cancelled. These had been given before the new position arose, and were, in my judgment, over-borne by the new perils.

'As for myself, in a personal way, I felt that I should not feel it a disgrace to be recalled for doing what I regarded as my duty. I had not very much, but, at the worst, I had enough to live upon.'

Without a masterful Pro-Consul at the Cape, Lucknow might have fallen, before there were forces to relieve it. That would have lit, for our rule in India, a bonfire in which Bombay would only have been a crackling twig.

It was a stirring British tune that the kilted pipers of the 93rd at Lucknow played.



XV AYE DREAMING AND DOING

Carlyle and Sir George Grey, forgathered at Chelsea, walked up and down in the open, as they often did, discussing some religious question. Carlyle stopped, laid his hand on Sir George's shoulder, and, looking him in the face, exclaimed, 'Oh, that I could believe like you!'

Well, no plank in the faith of Sir George was more firm than the one marked: 'Mission and destiny of the Anglo-Saxon people.' He had been planting the outposts of empire, and he saw these grow out towards each other. Then, he beheld the old Motherland and them, twining ever closer into a mighty garland, which should sweeten the globe with fragrance. Nay, he even saw again, in the garland, a very radiant bloom that a king's tempest had sundered.

'In effect,' said Sir George, 'I was recalled from South Africa, on account of proposals I had made, towards federation in that part of the realm. I planned to federate, for common action, Cape Colony, Natal, our other territories, and also the Orange Free State. Farther, I had virtually asked the co-operation of the Transvaal Republic, with the Government and people of which, I was on very friendly terms. There was to be no change anywhere; simply, a federal Parliament would manage affairs that were of concern to all parties. I have little doubt that I could have brought about federation, only I was not permitted to go on. Much as my proposals were supported in South Africa, I could get no hearing for them from my superiors at home.'

It had been the same when, in New Zealand, he took steps to paint all the Pacific Isles, British. He wanted the Pacific, then largely an unstaked claim, to have our flag flying in solitary peace. Thus the smaller sections of the New World, like the larger areas, should be led onward, undisturbed by the rivalries of the Old World. Fill the lap of England with distant lands, but exact from her the most sublime service to them- that of a mother. If Sir George had been supported, New Caledonia would have entered the British nursery.

'I had,' that lost part of our history ran; 'regarded the New Caledonian group as pertaining to New Zealand. Making a tour of the Pacific Islands, with Bishop Selwyn, I visited New Caledonia. We had no representative there, and three days before our arrival, a French frigate had put in and hoisted the French flag.

'I protested against that, in an official letter to the French captain. He declared his orders from the French Government to be specific; he was to annex New Caledonia. I had an old brig, while he had a good man-of- war. No doubt I could have spoken with more authority, if my vessel had also been a man-of-war. However, as a result of my representations, it was arranged that the French should do nothing, incur no expenditure, which would interfere with the island being declared British, until we had referred the matter to our Governments.

'This was about the time of the agreement, between ourselves and Louis Napoleon, in reference to the invasion of the Crimea. It is conceivable, that the French Emperor took advantage of the opportunity to lay hands on New Caledonia. Anyhow, I feared that the alliance might counteract my despatch to London. Most likely it did, for I was instructed that the French were to be left in possession.'

While sailing the Pacific, Sir George also called at Norfolk Island, then a prison house. The worst characters of the Australian penal settlements, those to whom perdition beaconed, were drafted to Norfolk Island. The whole scene shocked Sir George, as it rankled in his memory, a sombre nightmare. It saddened him, to think that so fair a place should be one of the black spots of the earth.

'Here,' he said, 'were nature and man meeting together, she at her best, he at his worst. How beautiful we found Norfolk Island; how well graced, with its pine and other trees! I suppose there is no tree, growing anywhere, which for beauty could be given preference over the Norfolk Island pine. It was an evidence of the bounteous garden, set by nature amid a fresh, crystal sea, and wooed by a loving climate.

'By contrast, the convict settlement! The stricken creatures worked in irons, and when evening came, they were turned into a great court where they slept. The irons being, in most instances, removed, the quarrelling and fighting began. I heard of a convict who had been tried for killing a fellow, during some fall-out. He appealed to those judging him: "I came here, having the heart of a man, and your convict system, with its brutal associations, has given me the heart of a beast."'

England built in tribulations—nations! At first we had no better use for Australia than to moor hulks to it. That was an eddy in the nobler stream of tribulation which, like the Nile, bore all fertility in its waters. Sir George Grey sat upon a Mount Pisgah that commanded the past and the future. He saw the stream, beginning in far-away mist-crowned sources, roll down the ages. It was a flood of destiny.

'I suppose,' he submitted, 'we all recognise that there are certain driving forces behind the march of humanity. We may not see them, or we may merely get a glimpse of them now and then, but they are there, and always in operation. Providence; that is my word. The chief of these forces we have, as I hold, in the evolution of the Anglo-Saxon race.'

Go back to the England of Elizabeth, and what did we find? A race of hardy men, who took delight in sailing virgin seas, in becoming familiar with new countries; who were opening up fresh tracks across the globe. Following upon that, consider the drift of legislation in the British Isles, from the period of Elizabeth. It was to appropriate the land into the hands of a few, to create great landlords, to make individual men the owners, nay the tyrants, of vast areas. This meant depriving the common people of their natural means of subsistence. It forced them to maintain themselves where there was actually no room, with the outcrop of want, suffering, discontent.

The great eating up of the Irish land, the throttling of the natural wealth of that country, began with the ill work done in the Elizabethan age. Yet, the full mischief did not appear until Sir George's own early days, when the Irish people were leaving their native land in ship-loads. In England the result came sooner, and ran on continuously, rather than burst the wave which was to engulf Ireland.

'Has it ever occurred to you,' Sir George asked, 'how beautiful a contribution the Irish girl, driven to another land by starvation, has made to the development of the English-speaking race? What a stretch of Anglo-Saxondom has been peopled by her wages, hardly earned in service, and sent home to Ireland for the emigration of her father and mother, her sisters and brothers! She is a winning illustration of how the hard task- master necessity, has been our architect for building up new nations. Ireland has been tortured and beaten, and her daughters and sons, in that torture, those blows, have done wondrous work for us.

Coupled with divorce between the people and the land, there arose in the British Isles, religious persecutions and tyrannies. These were the twin forces which, with just exception enough to prove the rule, planted the Anglo-Saxon in every corner of the earth. Two great evils working out in good; a sowing in wrong and wickedness, the garnering righteousness.

Cradling like that made men and nations. When Spain founded colonies, she sent delegates designedly to do so. When France colonised Canada, that was her model; and the like with other nations. They planted all the Old World institutions, with their imperfections, on new soil, which, as time had shown, was like building on sand.

Taught by bitter experience at home, Anglo-Saxons struck out fresh lines, in the fresh lands where, thanks to the discoveries of adventurous rovers, they could find asylum. The humanities in them got scope; they carried tolerance and liberty ever with them. Take the Puritans who founded New England! Was there ever such a noble band? Again, take the Quakers or the English and Irish Roman Catholics! In some cases, when there was persecution on the Continent of Europe, these British emigrants attracted to them what was persecuted. South Africa was founded in oppression, independently of us as it happened, since the forefathers of the Boers were largely French Huguenots.

It was not enough, that the Anglo-Saxon should rush from starvation and persecution, to a freer home across the seas. No sooner had he found it, than the old oppression might again be clanking its chains at his heels. The stern Mother more than once stretched out her hand to coerce her freer children, forcing them ever to take new ground, and be, so to speak, clear of her clutches. The instance of America occurred during this second stage in the weft and woof of tribulation which was at the root of our growth. The same with the Boers of South Africa, who, by harsh regulations, were forced inland, thus opening up new territory. It had all worked with the precision and force of a Nasmyth hammer.

Naturally, a time would arrive when the liberty and freedom of the Saxon, gone over sea, should react upon the Old World. Sir George held it proven that the inspiration of the New World had, in real measure, been the emancipation of the Old. Very many of the inventions of the nineteenth century, which were the threads of modern progress, were to have their origin in the New World. She would heap coals of fire on the head of the Old.

How, to help this girdling of the whole world with beneficent influences, through the medium of the Anglo-Saxon? Sir George turned him on his Mount Pisgah, first in New Zealand, later in South Africa. He had been looking at the scored, furrowed, violent past. It had worked out its meaning, nor was there doubt as to the bearing of that message upon the future.

At Pisgah's highest peak the sun shone, only there were mists, which it did not pierce, in the valleys below. Just, it caught one wisp of the vapour, and twirled it about in the wind. The errant thing flung into a sign—Federation of the English-speaking People; and was gone.

Sir George Grey dipped for a Grand Pacific Isles Protectorate, and a red noose from Downing Street strangled it. He dipped for a Federated South Africa, and the red noose caught himself. That is, he was recalled from his Cape Governor-ship on account of his projects. Ah, that he had been permitted to go on with them! All the gold of the Randt would not have weighed in the scales like that.

True, he was returned to South Africa, which clamoured angrily at his recall, but, as he said, 'It was with strict injunctions to stop my federation schemes, for these would not be tolerated.'

They were a generation too soon. Yet, their author had already drawn on posterity in order to develop English colonies. Was it right to tax posterity? High talk turned on this at a dinner in London, where Sir George met Gladstone, Macaulay, and other celebrities. 'Certainly,' Sir George argued, 'if some large expense is undertaken which will benefit those to come after us, as well as those already here, it is more equity that the former should be charged with their share.' The principle had been put into practice in the Colonies, and he imagined that this dinner helped its advance in the Old Country. Especially, he applied that opinion to the taking over, by Government, of the English telegraph lines.

'I recall very well,' Sir George stated, 'the picturesque way in which Macaulay expressed our common trait of being interested in trifles that affect us closely, to the neglect of large happenings which are distant. "Here," he said, about some item of news, "is a mandarin in China who has beheaded a thousand people in a batch. I was quite shocked when I read of it this morning. During the day I contrived to cut one of my fingers. I'm ashamed to confess that I thought so much about the finger, that I quite forgot the massacred Chinamen! That was Macaulay's illustration."

'As the dinner party was breaking up, I stood for a minute with him. He had not been enjoying very good health. When I congratulated him on his seeming revival in strength, he showed me his hand, which was puffy and blown, and answered: "Oh, I'm not so well as you might think." Poor fellow, the remark was too true, for he died within a fortnight from that evening.'

To South Africa, soon after Sir George Grey had resumed duty there, came a member of the Royal family. This was Prince Alfred, later the Duke of Edinburgh, now the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Sir George suggested the visit, and he believed it had excellent results. It delighted the colonists to have a son of the Queen among them. Seeing him the natives could exclaim, 'Again, the Queen loves us or she would not send us her son!' The visit drew out the regard of South Africa towards England and its Sovereign. Certainly the federal idea!

'Prince Alfred,' Sir George made an appreciation of him, 'was a nice, frank, handsome boy; an excessively taking little boy. In his honour, we had perhaps the largest hunt that ever took place in South Africa. It was calculated that he shot more deer in fifteen minutes, than his father would have shot in the Scottish Highlands in a season.

'The Prince had to face a different sort of experience at a town, Port Elizabeth I think, which we reached on his birthday. He had to walk between lines of girls, laden with bouquets, which they flung down before him, to the words: "Many happy returns of the day." It was rather trying for a midshipman.

'Everybody was delighted with Prince Alfred, and even the President of the Transvaal Republic called him "Our Prince." For his progress through the country, I had a beautiful wagon made. At the close of the tour Prince Alfred gave it, a friendly gift, to the Transvaal President. You can understand how it would be regarded by him, even be useful. Moreover it was calculated, while only a wagon, to impress the burghers of the Transvaal with the greatness of England. A simple pastoral people, they could not themselves have begot such a vehicle and team.'

Prince Alfred confided to Sir George Grey, with boyish certainty, that he never wanted to succeed to the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg. He wouldn't have it. 'I have been all over the place,' exclaimed the dashing young sailor, 'and, believe me, it hasn't a pond on which you could sail a punt.'



XVI THE FAR-FLUNG BATTLE-LINE

A captain of the sea most proves himself that when it storms, and so a captain of empire.

The danger signal was flying again in New Zealand, and Sir George Grey must needs be asked to get it down. Hardly had he been keel-hauled for his doings in one colony, when another required him. He must have been uncertain whether to despair or smile. It was like love-making.

During his first rule in New Zealand, Sir George held a conference of Maori chiefs, Te-Whero-Whero being present. He had come along, in the train of the Governor, without any of his own people, who lived farther north. It grieved him to be thus situate, at a crisis when the ability to tender assistance in men, might be of the utmost worth.

'Those other chiefs,' he addressed Sir George, 'are all inferior to me, but they have their retainers with them. They are promising you to bring so much strength into the field, while, for myself, I have no one here. I seem not to aid you at all, but as long as I am separated from my own people I'll fight in the ranks of some other chief. You have treated me badly, in that I am here without support to give you. You force me to put myself in quite a humble position.'

The speech was esteemed by Sir George at more than warriors, and the memory of it made him exclaim: 'Ah, they were fine fellows, those old Maori chieftains! You required to understand them, but they were worth every study; nobles of a noble race!'

Meanwhile, Te-Whero-Whero had died. A concert of tribes had made him Maori King, and his son Tawhiao succeeded to the newly set up throne. It was the symbol of a movement to keep the Maori nation intact, though land rights were the immediate subject of clash. Many things had happened while Sir George Grey was in South Africa; he was the problem-solver called in late.

'You might put it broadly,' he expressed the problem, 'that the Maoris were making a last stand for their fatherland, and credit be to them in that sense. They, no doubt, wished to be full governors of New Zealand, and they talked of driving out the Europeans. I set to work, with my best energies, to smooth away the troubles which threatened so thickly.'

Sir George went quietly among the disaffected natives, hence a dramatic scene at the graveside of Te-Whero-Whero. He journeyed alone to the Maori headquarters, feeling that he was in no danger. When he arrived, the place was almost deserted, the Maoris being elsewhere in council. He sought out the grave of Te-Whero-Whero, bowed his head in tribute over it, and there stood to ruminate on old associations. Thus the Maoris discovered him, to their astonishment, and they cried: 'Come here! Come here!' If there had been no welcome for him the Maori cry would have been: 'Go away! Go away!'

'Word of my presence,' Sir George remembered, 'was sent to King Tawhiao, and he started to ride to me, but was unable, being worn out, to complete his journey. With royal etiquette, he had a certificate to that purport made out and sent on to me for my satisfaction. It was drawn up and attested with every precision, and I got it all right, nor could I help laughing at the idea.

'But Tawhiao's anxiety that I should be assured of his good faith, even in so trifling a matter, struck me as a pleasing item of character. I took a fancy to him after we became personally acquainted, and he was one of the last persons I saw, when I finally left New Zealand for England. Years before, I had bidden him another good-bye, he being then the one who was setting out on a visit to England.'

Estimated by his name, Tawhiao was a 'scorner of the sun,' but unhappily not of spirits. They were apt, in the days when his kingship had grown an empty name, to make him quite unkingly. He naturally called upon Sir George Grey, for years out of official life, to learn about England.

'Will you answer me a question?' Sir George broached him, adding: 'There need be no false modesty between friends.' Tawhiao waited sedately for the question, which was: 'What would you think of a man who, by some wrong means, had brought about the death of a fellow-being?'

'Why, he would be a very bad man; a man deserving of most severe punishment.'

'If a man brought about the death of several other men, what would you say?'

'Who could be so cruel? It is not possible that anybody could be so wicked.'

'If that is your view, Tawhiao, what words would you have for a man who destroyed the happiness of a whole nation, and that his own?'

Tawhiao could not frame words for such a person, more especially as he now began to realise that the parables were fitting himself. 'Yes, yes,' was his exclamation, 'I understand, I understand!' Then he cried like a baby.

What judgment would England pass upon King Tawhiao if, while a visitor there, he gave way to drink? He would disgrace, not himself only, but the whole Maori race.

'Alas, yes,' sobbed Tawhiao; 'what can be done?'

'I'll tell you,' said Sir George gently. 'We'll both sign a pledge, agreeing to abstain from alcohol in any form. That pledge will mutually bind us for a term of years, and there could be no more sacred contract.'

It was a bright contract for Tawhiao. And now here he was, at a New Zealand wayside station, where there drew up the train carrying Sir George Grey, on his last New Zealand journey, to the Plymouth-bound liner. 'I wished him farewell,' Sir George described this parting, 'and he wept. I was much touched, remembering that he had been all through a Maori war against me.'

That was retrospect. The second Maori war afforded Sir John Gorst an experience not without humour.

In Sir George Grey's phrase, Sir John Gorst went out to New Zealand to do good and did it. He conducted a school for the education of the Maoris, and acted as Government Commissioner. 'He had been at work for some time,' Sir George added, 'and had achieved excellent results altogether. He was popular with the Maoris, and indeed they never had a truer friend.' However, some of those ardent in the 'king movement,' regarded his mere presence in the heart of their territory, as an influence against its success. The crisis arrived from an encounter of wits which fairly set the Waikato river on fire.

'The Maoris,' Sir George retailed this affair, 'had founded a paper to propagate the king movement. They christened it by a name which might be freely translated as "The Giant Eagle Flying Aloft." With my approval, Sir John Gorst brought out a protagonist to the Maori weekly. I furnished the requisites for the venture, the money coming from revenues applicable to native purposes.

'The idea was to counteract the teaching of "The Giant Eagle Flying Aloft"; to show how absurd it was for any section of the Maoris to think they could beat the English. Our organ was designed to be educative, and in that respect to help in the maintenance of peace. The title of the Maori paper was in allusion to a great eagle, which, at a remote period, had existed in New Zealand. The Maoris had chants about it, and in their legends it was described as "Bed-fellow of earth-shaking thunder." 'Very well, Sir John Gorst replied to their grand title by another in Maori, signifying: "The Lonely Sparrow on the House Top." This, of course, was suggested by the Scriptures, and its force of contrast at once tickled the Maori sense of humour. Sir John Gorst's satire was so keen that they could not, themselves, help laughing over the fun which "The Lonely Sparrow on the House Top" made of "The Giant Eagle Flying Aloft." It went on for several numbers, perhaps half-a-dozen, when the Maoris informed Sir John that he must stop his paper, or they would throw his printing materials into the river.

'The conductors of "The Giant Eagle Flying Aloft" had the view, if I am not mistaken, that "The Lonely Sparrow on the House Top" did not fight with adequate dignity. It was too anxious to make merriment of its adversary, so causing the latter to appear ridiculous to many Maoris. Sir John Gorst paid no heed to the threats against him, and next, there arrived a band of Maoris who uprooted his printing machinery. He happened to be from home at the time, and when he returned it was to find this disorder, and the Maoris in possession. 'The scheme thus to dispossess him and the "Lonely Sparrow on the House Top," had been headed by the chief Rewi. It was Rewi who flung, from a besieged pa, the defiant message that the Maoris would never surrender, that they would fight "For ever, For ever, For ever!" I am inclined to believe that he put himself at the head of the raid upon Sir John Gorst, in order to be able to protect him from any hurt,'

Be that as it might, Rewi and the raiders were determined that Sir John Gorst should depart the 'king country.' They pronounced this verdict upon him with every ceremony, and his answer was equally determined. It was: 'Nothing but a direct order from Sir George Grey shall induce me to leave my post.' At that, Rewi granted time for a reference to the Governor, who instructed Sir John Gorst to withdraw. Had it been otherwise; or had the order lagged, Sir John would most likely have shared the fate of 'The Lonely Sparrow on the House Top!' The sword proved mightier than the pen in that duel.

And despite Sir George Grey's efforts, the sword was again to be drawn over a wide area of New Zealand. A particular land dispute, which meant cleavage with the confederated Maoris, had been gnawing its way along. Sir George investigated it, reached the decision that the Maori claim was just, and made up his mind to rescind the purchase. He was not autocrat now, as he had been before, the New Zealand constitution which he had drafted, being in operation. Things had to move by routine, there was muddling somewhere, and in the middle of it all, the Maoris waylaid a small party of soldiers.

Nobody had dreamt of such a thing. Sir George's ministers asked him: 'What are you going to do after this outrage and challenge?' He answered: 'We must give the land back, according to promise. The duty of a powerful State is to be just, and re-introduce the proper owner to the land. We cannot refuse to do so, because persons, over whom he has no control, have massacred our soldiers.' But war surged across New Zealand, a wild, unwholesome spectre, and Sir George must take it so. It had the tale of Wereroa Pa, which again presents him as the mailed hand.

A British officer held a post which could not be relieved, until the Maoris in Wereroa Pa had been scattered. That enforced the necessity, urgent enough in itself, for capturing the fortress. The Maoris had spent all their craft of defence on Wereroa, as, in the former New Zealand war, they did on Ruapekapeka. Engirt by palisades of wood, high and strong, they cried defiance to the Pakeha. The general in control of the British troops would not tackle Wereroa with the strength at his disposal. Sir George Grey resolved to do it himself, and got together what force he could. It was bestriding the military regulations, usurping all forms and traditions, but it was war.

The Maoris in the pa had a passing mind to surrender, and Sir George was anxious to catch them thus. He rode up to take possession, though those with him counselled 'Be careful lest we come to grief.' The parley was perilous, for the bulk of the Maoris inside the pa were inclined, after all, to resist to the uttermost. Sir George and his escort drew up within easy range of the Maori muskets, and he was loth to turn back. He only did so, when it had become evident that further delay might bring a disaster. 'I wanted to convince them,' he emphasised, 'that if they would not give up the place we should have to take it. Our welcome was so risky that we might, perhaps, be compared to the little boy who scrambled up a garden wall, only to find himself face to face with the Scotch gardener. "Where are you going?" demanded the gardener; and the boy answered, "Back again."

'That was our situation; we must return, since nothing could be achieved by debate. No, I don't think that I had any bodily feeling as to the danger we ran, any burden of danger. Nobody can be afraid who has the lives of others hanging upon his actions. A man who every instant is applied to for orders, has not time to think of fear. It finds scope when a person is acting under the direction of somebody else, and thus is ignorant of the measures being carried out for the common protection and success. Ignorance is ever the channel through which fear attacks a human being, as watch a little child when it understands, and when it does not.'

Perhaps Sir George Grey's nearest passage with death, in Maoriland, occurred during the first war, but he did not learn of it until later. 'I was,' he said, 'in the habit every forenoon of riding between our military camp and the sea-shore, where the warships lay at anchor. Having regard to the unsettled state of the country, it was maybe imprudent of me to do this, and moreover I was only accompanied by an orderly sergeant. It seemed that some Maoris hid in wait for me in a valley, intending, I am afraid, to fire upon me. Two things fortunately happened. I rode down very early that day, and some turn of duty took me back by another road. Then, it proved to be the last day on which it was necessary for me to communicate with the ships. Good luck attended me, as I congratulated myself, when informed of the plot and its failure by a Maori who had knowledge of it, Upon what slight chances do things depend! No, they only seem so to depend!'

As to Wereroa, it must be captured by strength of arms, or rather by a subtle use of these. There could be no idea of attacking it from the front. That would have been a funeral march for Sir George's handful of men. He devised the capture of a rough spur of ground which commanded the pa. The Maoris built square to a hostile world, and forgot this height behind them. If it should be attained, they were out-manoeuvred and helpless. The British fighting men, with Maori allies, marched off to break in upon the rear of the Wereroa. They filed past the Governor, shaking hands with him; the moment was tense.

'Assuredly,' Sir George remarked, 'the mission was not without danger, as what venture can be in war? Only, my people must have felt that I would not put them to it, unless there was every hope of success. That little parade brought up thoughts in all of us, and was very touching.'

The vital spur was captured, and with it a cohort of Maoris who were marching to relieve the pa. The garrison of Wereroa were beaten by tactics, the most deadly of weapons, and they accepted the verdict. The victory was the more complete, in that the Governor lost never a man of his tiny army. It would be hard to aver that he did not, even as the grave Pro-Consul, love such an adventure for itself. That tune sang in the blood.

Here a signpost is reached. Thirty years had passed, since Sir George Grey waded into the surf where savagery and civilisation meet, stilling it for the latter. The harness of empire on him, had been at full strain all the time. He had come through the passes, alike in the conduct of wars, and in the higher mission of spreading light and happiness on the wings of peace. But much sunshine had covered his track, and it was a light which would not fail.

What think'st thou of our Empire now, though earn'd With travail difficult?

No, the cold hand of Downing Street intervened; his second Governorship of New Zealand slammed to a close. It was an era when the Imperial spirit was niggardly, obscurantist. Brushing aside details, it is easy to see how the servant and the official masters, choosing different roads, would ultimately part. The 'dangerous man' was outcast, and thereon he said in ripeness: 'If my going was equivalent to recall, I have nothing to regret in what I did. Farther, I think history has vindicated my work as a whole.'



XVII FOR ENGLAND'S SAKE

'Suppose,' urged Sir George Grey, 'that in my lifetime a hundred men have died from disappointment and chagrin—that is enough to condemn the whole system!'

He was speaking of Disraeli's discovery, that the great colonial Governorships should go to those who had been 'born in the purple' or had married into it. It was, in a way, a matter personal to him, because the plan came into operation about the date his Pro-Consulship ceased. He felt that possibly it influenced the manner of his going, and, if so, that a wrong was done him as an individual. But he was merely bringing out his attitude to the system itself.

'I thought it was bad for everybody. In effect, it shut the field against simple merit; anyhow, discouraged it. A person might have all the qualities for a Governorship, except part and parcel in the peerage. On the other hand, it was injurious to the Colonies, because it set up men on an eminence, not for sheer merit, but because they happened to be born to rank. How did Napoleon Bonaparte make his army? By opening the very highest places to whoever could best fill them.'

Governor or no Governor, Sir George Grey must still work for his ideas and ideals, and after a little he hied him to England. Thinking, perhaps, that it had been abrupt with him, Downing Street was affable and kindly. But he was never, no matter how British Governments came or went, to be more employed. South Africa yearned for a strong pilot, and he was ready to step aboard. 'I even asked,' he said, 'to be sent back there, the one occasion on which I ever asked for anything, but without result.'

Disraeli offered to find him a seat in Parliament, perhaps as a sort of balm for wounded feelings. 'I put that meaning on the offer,' Sir George remarked, 'and really it was very good-natured on Disraeli's part. It was so, all the more, when I remembered our contest over the affair of the Kaffir chiefs and their allowance. You see, I rather had the best of that, and his friends chaffed him about it.' Sir George was his own political party all through life, so far as he was a politician at all. Disraeli asked no pledges, but, as Sir George observed, 'We were far divided in our views, and I should have been in revolt almost before I had taken my seat. Therefore I declined with thanks.'

Meanwhile, being free of official shackles, he hurled himself against the movement, rampant in England, to throw off the Colonies. He was Pro- Consul at large, under warrant of a duty for which he held himself accountable to the English-speaking people. He doubted whether he was not, thus, doing even better work, than he would have found to his hand as an employed Governor. There rang from end to end of the country a shriek of dismemberment: 'Cut the painter, chop off the Colonies, they are a burden to us; we should confine ourselves to ourselves!'

'It is difficult,' said Sir George, 'to make anybody, who was not in that struggle, understand it. One would have called it simply freakish, if the possible outcome had been less grave. It was a strange fit to seize upon the country, and unfortunately it expressed the view of nearly all the leading statesmen. Cut the painter! You cannot imagine any sensible person of these later, and regenerate, days having such an idea. Throw away Australasia or South Africa! You have heard my retort on such a demand. Who had the right, to tell another man, of the same blood, that he was no longer a Briton, because he lived many sea miles distant? Who could answer that? None! It was all a whimsy, a craze, a nightmare, which will never return—Never, Never!'

Sir George instructed the country, by word and pen, on the true value and destiny of the Colonies. He moved about, a crusader, indignant at separatism, eloquent to knot, and re-knot, the painter. For the slash of the knife he offered federation, and, springing therefrom, a happier, better world altogether. He did not doubt, to his last days, that the peril of the Empire was very real. Neither did he doubt that it was overcome, largely by the wisdom and foresight of the Queen. 'But for her action,' he declared in so many words, 'events would most probably have ended in the cutting adrift of some of the colonies. She saw true, and clear, and far, as the Prince Consort when alive had seen, and the Anglo- Saxon race has reason to be thankful.'

Wherever he had been, Sir George Grey had endeavoured, in his own phrase, to extend the liberties and right's of the people. 'Thus,' he instanced, 'until I went to the Cape, no judge had been appointed to the supreme court there, except from England. On vacancies occurring, I named two local men, both, I fancy, of Dutch family, thus breaking down a bad custom. I felt that it was impossible to govern a nation upon terms which hurt its manhood and dignity.' His crusade in England was on a like note, and eventually it found him a parliamentary candidate for Newark.

'Immediately my friends heard of the vacancy,' he narrated, 'they proposed that I should stand for it. I did so, an independent Liberal, and I was ostracised by the party leaders, who had another candidate they wanted to get in. I suppose I was too advanced altogether, and indeed I preached a kind of new gospel. It included emigration; a handmaid to federation when the Colonies had ripened. Then I was for free education, and disestablishment all round, as a necessary thing in relation to Christianity—in fact as one of its main doctrines. Farther, I advocated Irish Home Rule, even drafting a short Bill, and in fine I was for a variety of innovations.'

Apart from all else, he understood that his Liberal rival was required in the House of Commons, to help Cardwell with military affairs. Anyhow, he gathered that impression from a visit which Mr. A. J. Mundella, journeying over from Nottingham, paid him at Newark. The encounter supplied a good story, and its manner was Sir George Grey in a characteristic mood. This was how he gravely met Mr. Mundella's gentle overture, 'Now, won't you withdraw from the contest?'

'Yes, I quite see the difficulty. You want somebody to assist Cardwell. However well your suggestion might obviate the difficulty, I have an alternative which I think would equally suit. I had a military training, I did very creditably as a student at Sandhurst, I served with the colours, and I attained the rank of captain. I shall be glad to show you my papers, proving my knowledge of military affairs; and altogether, if your War Minister requires somebody to prompt him, I don't see why I should not fill the place as satisfactory as another. 'Oh,' exclaimed Mr. Mundella, 'there's no use in coming to you with anything, for you always make a joke of it.' So they parted, and laughing, over the years, at the incident, Sir George said: 'You know Mundella was a capital fellow, of sterling ability and many qualities, but I'm afraid he was never a humorist.'

Sir George was not to be member for Newark, since, in the long run, to save the loss of a Liberal seat, he retired. His committee put it to him that this was the rule of the road, and he felt it no sacrifice to quit the field. The tribes had to be, pacified, but how different the methods in primitive and civilised society! Two tribes fell out during his first Governorship of New Zealand, and they must settle their difference by combat. Sir George deprecated such things, as not being conducive to the welfare of the Colony. No sooner did he hear of the duel, than he ordered a warship to up-steam and carry him to the spot. He was put ashore, when the day was breaking, at a point still sixteen miles from the combatants. He obtained a, horse for himself, another for an orderly, and the pair were given rein.

'I believe,' he told, 'that our first mounts proved not very good, only, at a farm on the way, we were able to replace them with better. Our ride was across rough country, innocent of roads, but we reached our destination just as the campaign opened for the day. I waited a minute to master the state of parties, then galloped straight between them, and called out "Stop! Stop!" Amazed at my appearance, they just shouted along their ranks "Te Kuwana"—the Maori effort to say "The Governor."

'As I had ridden into the fusilade, a chief was shot in the neck, with the penalty that he could never afterwards turn his head. Happily he was not looking over his shoulder at the moment, for that would have been an awkward position in which to be left. My plunge into the battle was a little risky, but I calculated that the Maoris would, most likely, be glad of an excuse to stop fighting. Combatants who fall out easily, generally are. They regard as a benefactor, anybody who can rescue them from their scrape, with due form of ceremony and guarantee of dignity. My order to the Maoris, desiring peace, was obeyed.'

This is the Sir George Grey whose doings you follow with the keenest tingle of interest—Grey, Pro-Consul. But his other activities all grouped round this signature, and they are to be read with it. From England he went back to New Zealand, thinking he could best influence the Old World from the shores of the New World. He sat himself down in the remote solitude of Kawau, among his books, and every morning his heart beat round the Empire, a morning drum.

Twice Governor of New Zealand, he was yet to be its Prime Minister, a record which is unique. Being asked to work in New Zealand domestic politics, he replied: 'I will be a messenger if in that capacity I can usefully serve the State.' Yet, once more, you turn to the romance maker and discover him taking down, by the lake side of Rotorua, that of Hine- Moa. He rescued it, a Hero and Leander legend, with a variation, from the Maori ages, and placed it, a pearl, among his other delvings from Polynesian mythology. The story captured him, with its naive charm, when first he heard it from the lips of a chief, and many should know it.

''Tis odd,' he made the comment, 'how frequently like incidents occur in the mythology of diverse races. By what means were they communicated? As I have pointed out, in my compilation of Maori legends, there is one of Maui, which recalls to you the finding of Arthur, in Tennyson's "Idylls of the King." The same legendary idea occurs; a child cradled by the sea, none knowing that it had any other parent.'

'Now, O Governor,' spoke the Maori chief, 'look round you and listen to me, far there is something worth seeing here.' Sir George was sitting on the very spot where sat Hine-Moa, the great ancestress of the tribe, when she swam the lake to join her sweetheart Tutanekai. She was a maiden of rare beauty and high rank, and many young men desired to wed her. She found escape from these perplexities in a long swim to her choice, Tutanekai. But the Maori chief goes forward with the idyll, and must be followed word for word, as Sir George wrote:—

At the place where she landed there is a hot spring, separated from the lake only by a narrow ledge of rooks. Hine-Moa got into this to warm herself, for she was trembling all over, partly from the cold, after swimming in the night across the wide lake of Rotorua, and partly also, perhaps, from modesty at the thought of meeting Tutanekai.

Whilst the maiden was thus warming herself in the hot spring, Tutanekai happened to feel thirsty and said to his servant, 'Bring me a little water.' So his servant went to fetch water for him, and drew it from the lake in a calabash, close to the spot where Hine-Moa was sitting.

The maiden, who was frightened, called out to him in a gruff voice like that of a man: 'Whom is that water for?

He replied, 'It's for Tutanekai.'

'Give it here then,' said Hine-Moa. And he gave her the water and she drank, and, having finished drinking, she purposely threw down the calabash and broke it.

Then the servant asked her, 'What business had you to break the calabash of Tutanekai?' but Hine-Moa did not say a word in answer.

The servant then went back, and Tutanekai said to him, 'Where is the water I told you to bring me?'

So he answered, 'Your calabash was broken.'

And his master asked him, 'Who broke it?' And he answered, 'The man who is in the bath.'

And Tutanekai said to him, 'Go back again, then, and fetch me some water.'

He therefore took a second calabash and went back and drew water in the calabash from the lake and Hine-Moa again said to him, 'Whom is that: water for?' So the slave answered as before, 'For Tutanekai.' And the maiden again said, 'Give it to me, for I am thirsty.' And the slave gave it to her and she drank and purposely threw down the calabash and broke it. And these occurrences took place repeatedly between those two persons.

At last the slave went again to Tutanekai, who said to him, 'Where is the water for me?' And his servant answered, 'It is all gone; your calabashes have been broken.'

'By whom?' said his master. 'Didn't I tell you that there is a man in the bath?' answered the servant.

'Who is the fellow?' said Tutanekai.

'How can I tell?' replied the slave. 'Why, he's a stranger.'

'Didn't he know the water was for me?' said Tutanekai. 'How did the rascal dare to break my calabashes! Why, I shall die from rage!'

Then Tutanekai threw on some clothes and caught hold of his club, and away he went and came to the bath and called out 'Where's that fellow who broke my calabashes?'

And Hine-Moa knew the voice, that the sound of it was that of the beloved of her heart; and she hid herself under the overhanging rocks of the hot spring. But her hiding was hardly a real hiding; rather a bashful concealing of herself from Tutanekai that he might not find her at once, only after trouble and careful search for her.

So he went feeling about, along the banks of the hot spring, searching everywhere, whilst she lay coyly hid under the ledges of the rocks, peeping out, wondering when she should be found.

At last he caught hold of a hand and cried out, 'Hullo, who's this?'

And Hine-Moa answered: 'It's I, Tutanekai.'

And he said: 'But who are you? Who's I?' Then she spoke louder, and said: 'It's I, 'tis Hine-Moa.'

And he said: 'Ho! ho! ho! Can such in very truth be the case? Let us two, then, go to my house.'

And she answered 'Yes.'

And she rose up in the water as beautiful as the wild white hawk, and stepped upon the edge of the bath as graceful as the shy white crane. And he threw garments over her, and took her, and they proceeded to his house and reposed there, and thenceforth, according to the ancient laws of the Maoris, they were man and wife.



XVIII A FATHER OF FEDERATION

Mr Gladstone and Sir George Grey ploughed different seas, under charter from the English-speaking race. One flew his pennant in the nearer waters, the other in the farther. Now and then they met, but briefly, as ships do which pass in the night.

'What I saw of Mr. Gladstone,' said Sir George, 'was mostly at official gatherings, or gatherings arising out of official life. One session, however, during which I was in England, we dined almost every Wednesday evening at the same London house.

'Mr. Gladstone was always a most charming personality, and I recall his friendliness in walking up with me to the hall of ceremonies, when I received the honorary degree at Cambridge. He also was to have the honour conferred upon him that day, and it was considerate on his part to convoy me along, as I knew few people at Cambridge, the result of absence from England.

'As to public affairs, I suspect that he and I held widely different views, at all events on some subjects. Like everybody else, I recognised in him a commanding figure, but I am bound to say that his greatness seemed to me to lie in carrying out ideas, after they had been suggested by others, rather than in working them out himself.'

Sir George meant that Mr. Gladstone's genius as a statesman, was constructive more than creative, the fashioner of progress. For himself, a solitary idea sufficed to keep his heart warm, even in the colds of age—the federation of the English-speaking people. In one of the last letters he received from David Livingstone, there was the request, 'Write me often, because you cheer me up.' It was always possible to cheer Sir George up on federation; that set him aglow.

There were few to listen when he first preached the federal idea; he cried in the wilderness, but he did not cease to cry. He waited long for the echoes to come back, and they did come, with interest, too, when negotiations for an Anglo-American treaty of arbitration went afoot. Then, the negotiations tumbled through, whereat he said: 'Oh, the road may be a gradual one, with hills and stops, but there it lies, traced by destiny, and in the fulness of time it will be trodden.'

Peering into the twentieth century, one who would never see it, he foretold that its great problem would be this of Anglo-Saxon federation. It was not for us to dip into the future, farther than we could reasonably behold, but so far we were not only entitled, but bound, to go. He doubted whether any question, equal in importance to federation, had ever before engaged the attention of so large a portion of mankind. On that account he put forward with diffidence, the views which, after much reflection, he had formed upon it.

By Anglo-Saxon federation, he understood joint action, in the interests of mankind, on the part of those owning allegiance to the English tongue. Forms and methods might take care of themselves, so the thing itself was begotten. Yet that could only be, if the ties sought to be woven were elastic, free and freedom-giving. He wanted a golden chain, binding men to men the Anglo-Saxon world over, but a curb-chain nowhere.

'I am,' he spoke, 'merely expressing what is generally agreed, when I say that the end of the nineteenth century has brought us to a critical period in the history of the world. Systems of government do not last for ever; they decay and have to be replaced. The most perfect of machines wears itself out, and another has to be substituted.

'Not merely that, but the new one has to be of a different design, adapted to a fresh, most likely a severer, set of circumstances. A man who refused to utilise the wisdom and resources of his age in machinery, would be regarded as a madman. It is the same in the economy of the human family; to dread wise and ordered change is to court trouble.'

Thus, Sir George reasoned that we had arrived at an epoch of federation, the application of which would be something new, only the conditions needing it had not arisen before. The ancients had not discovered the art of securing political representation, or, what the moderns called the principle of federation. It was not necessary for the ancients, as it had become for the moderns. Simply, the conditions of the world had changed, and that on two planes.

In the past, there had been the continual discovery and peopling of new countries. No more remained to be discovered; no corner of the globe remained unknown to us. We knew what each nation was engaged in doing, and we were able to estimate, with some measure of assurance, what it would continue doing. Next, the mass of the people had gained a potent voice in the management of affairs. Democracy was coming to the throne, if it had not quite grasped all the trappings.

The key of what was to be, rested in those two facts, which made the world so different a working-machine from what it had been. And the using of the key was primarily confided to the Anglo-Saxon race, since it occupied the greatest extent of the globe, and included what was ripest and best in democracy.

'Everywhere,' Sir George showed, 'our people are working, with might and main, to develop the resources of the earth. They are characterised by a common language, a common literature, and common laws. Shakespeare, Milton, the riches of our classic literature, belong as much to these new nations over-sea, as they do to the Mother Country. The men and women of Anglo-Saxon stock carry with them, wherever they go, the one faith of Christianity.

'Really, there could not be anything but a unity, a oneness, in the whole structure upon which the race rests. If the progress, in natural federation, has been so great, through years when South Africa, or New Zealand, was far distant from England, when there were no swift steamers and no cables under the sea, what must it now become? Such wonderful changes has modern science brought about, that the peoples of Greater Britain and America are next-door neighbours to the folks in the Old Country.

'Nay, daily and hourly counsel goes on between all parts of the world, bringing the wisdom of the whole to each point. Communities, separated by seas and continents, are able to discuss with each other, on the minute, what action is for the highest interests of all. It is impossible that the federation we see existing in the incessant congress of the civilised world, can ever be gone back upon.'

A pretty incident of Sir George Grey's tour through Australia as a tribune might have been reported in London next morning. This was following the first conference, held in Sydney, on the great subject of Australasian federation: Sir George, after a season of heather burning, was taking ship at Sydney, to return to New Zealand. A multitude of people streamed forth to bid him good-bye, and he walked down their ranks to the steamer.

'As I was stepping on board,' he told the episode, 'I noticed a lad smoking a cigarette. Being near him, I remarked quietly, "What a pity it is to see a bright boy like you smoking! You are very young to smoke. I am sure if you consider the expense it will lead you into, and perhaps the injury to your health, you will not smoke."

'He looked up at me for a minute as if thinking, and then, with the declaration, "I'll never smoke again," threw the cigarette from him. By this time the crowd had noted what was transpiring, and they cheered the lad again and again, much, I'm afraid, to his confusion. Now, wasn't that a nice thing for a boy to do? It pleased me wonderfully.'

The proofs of federation by cable, which Sir George selected, were not, however, related to himself. One was the auspicious and happy event of the birth of a child, in direct succession to the English throne, Prince Edward of York. 'Why,' he paused, 'that was known within an hour on the farthest shores of Greater Britain, and the news, I can assure you, received with as keen a joy as in England.' The second ease was the historic London dock strike, of which he said, 'Not merely was that struggle followed from hour to hour in Australasia, but encouragements and assistance from Australasian workers to their comrades at home, swept continually across the seas.'

There was already union between the different branches of the Anglo-Saxon family, and all we had to do was to afford it assistance in growing and forming. Ever, we must provide more adequate means for utilising the onward tide of humanity, striving after higher ideals. We needed to have life permeated with all the helps and lights that were possible; not to shut these out as they became available.

There had been disturbances to the growth of Anglo-Saxon union, and opportunities for its furtherance had been thrown away. Perhaps the greatest disturbance was the war between the Northern and Southern States of America. 'It arose,' Sir George noted, 'out of the one great flaw in that wonderful creation, the American Constitution. Strangely enough, the Constitution omitted to make any provision for dealing with slavery, and inevitably, in course of time, came dispute and war.' Yet, the strands of race held unbroken through that trial, and the future was secure.

Sir George Grey found himself reinforced, in so believing, by the opinion of General Grant. This he heard from Sir T. Fowell Buxton; who had travelled in America with Mr. W. E. Forster, while Grant was President. The General took his English visitors for a drive, and his talk was of military matters and his horses, until they were nearly back at Washington. Suddenly, he went off on the subject of an alliance between Great Britain and the United States, his hopes and expectations of it. He added that he should not live to witness the drawing together, but he was certain it must become a great power in the world, especially on sea.

'Well,' Sir George commented, 'if General Grant, a man of singularly practical character, was among the prophets, I am quite content to be in his company.'

When he talked of the federation of the British Empire, or of the larger welding in which he had belief, Sir George would declare, 'No good service is rendered by creating difficulties ahead. We may be certain of this that each generation, as it comes rolling on, will hold its own views upon every subject, differing widely, perhaps, from the views of its predecessors. The essential thing, in all government, is to secure to the people at large, the power of enacting the laws they deem to be the wisest and best suited to the circumstances of their age.'

Thus, while he had worked out definite lines of federation, he was content if principles were accepted. 'No man,' he argued, 'should presume to lay down the law in such a matter; just let the vision be realised by natural process. Be there the hewing of materials, and the building would follow by and by. If it were possible to solidify the English-speaking people for common purposes, the gain to them, and to mankind, would be splendid. The blessings of federation were a hundredfold.

'Why,' said Sir George, 'war would practically die off the face of the earth. The armed camp which burdens the Old World, enslaves the nations, and impedes progress, would disappear. The Anglo-Saxon race, going together, could determine the balance of power for a fully peopled earth. Such a moral force would be irresistible, and debate would take the place of war, in the settlement of international disputes. If the arbitrament of reason, ousts the arbitrament of war, a new and beautiful world is unveiled.'

It was because Sir George saw, in federation, a vista of brighter life for the masses, that he was so persuaded an advocate of it, so keen a believer in its realisation. As a result of the cohesion of the race, we should have all life quickened and developed; unemployed energies called into action in many places where they lay stagnant. Below federation, the very essence of it, was decentralisation, the getting of the people fairly spread over the earth, not huddled into a few places where decay would follow overcrowding.

'Every section of the British Empire,' Sir George detailed this point, 'having complete self-government would contain its own life within itself, would offer the highest opportunities to the labours of its citizens. Whenever you constitute a new centre of authority you create a basis of general activity, which, in its turn, has off-shoots. There would be more employment; the waste lands of the Old World, and the still untilled ones of the New World, would be taken up. Federation is not the mere grouping of us together, but the settlement of problems that have long been forcing themselves to the front. Difficulties which we can ill solve now, which appear to block our path, we should be able to settle with ease.'

Sir George discerned an element, not fully dreamt of, which would immensely strengthen the federal idea. It was the influence of women, growing to be a powerful factor in the affairs of the world. This sweet authority would tend to keep nations from plunging into scenes of bloodshed. It would be a blessed assistance towards the peace of the world in times of excitement, and so a bulwark for federation, which was the creator of peace.

Finally, the rise of the Anglo-Saxon, by means of federation, would benefit the world in respect to religion and language kernels of all advancement. It would mean the triumph of what, if carried out, was the highest moral system that man in all his history had known—Christianity. And it would imply the dominance of probably the richest language that ever existed, our own English.

So speaking, Sir George Grey summed up: 'Given a universal code of morals and a universal tongue, how far would be the step to that last great federation, the brotherhood of mankind, which Tennyson and Burns have sung to us?'

NOTE. Those who desire to study Sir George Grey's full and final scheme for Anglo-Saxon federation, may refer to the 'Contemporary Review' of August 1894, where it appeared as an article by the present writer.



XIX WAITING TO GO

'I am just waiting my time to go, meanwhile doing what little I can that may be useful to my fellow-men.'

These were the words of Sir George Grey, and none could better express the closing years of his life. If he might sow, in some wayside garden, an idea for the common happiness, he counted that a day on the active list. It made him feel young again, blowing the old fires red and rosy. Ever, he held to his tryst with Dean Stanley.

'One evening,' it had been made, 'the Dean and myself were walking round Westminster Abbey, as the doors were being closed. It was during my visit to England, after my last Governorship, and the Dean was full of the restorations then being carried out on the Chapter House. Naturally, I had the keenest interest in whatever affected the ancient seat of the House of Commons, regarding it as a shrine of constitutional government.

'Dean Stanley wanted to show me everything, to explain the whole place. He told me of a theory of his that the Commons, while sitting there in the circular room, probably had no parties, so called. They were grouped in a ring, not confronting each other sharply, antagonistically, and everything went on with quietness. But when they moved across to St. Stephen's, they found themselves set opposite-wise, which fact may have tended to create the party system. That was the idea put to me by the Dean, though how far he applied it, I do not recollect.

'Anyhow, he was anxious that I should study the Chapter House under him, but it was too late to do it that evening. "Never mind," he said, "let us wait until things are more complete and we shall go in together." "Oh," I answered, "I really need not trouble you. I can look in myself one afternoon." "No, no," he insisted, with much good nature, "I want to be your guide. You must promise that you will not go there without me." "Very well, then," I assured him, "I shall wait until you take me."

'The Dean and myself did not, as it happened, meet again at that period, nor were we, by the decree of Providence, ever to meet. Thus, I shall not see the earliest home of the House of Commons, as it has been restored, for I promised.'

There swam in Sir George's recollection, a little story touching the evolution of the body politic, during his own time. It was like Maui of Maori legend, and Arthur 'by wild Dundagil on the Cornish sea,' in that he scarce knew whence it came. He inclined to link it, a whiff of airy gossip, with two of the most strenous middle Victorians, but would hold no names certain.

'At all events,' he said, 'the Cabinet was formerly a smaller body than it now is, and less formal in its proceedings. The members would drop in, with the newspapers in their hands, and take a chair, here or there, as the case might be. A quite large Cabinet being created, the Prime Minister suggested, "Gentlemen, had we not better sit round the table?" The suggestion met with approval, and the Premier made to take his place at the head of the table. Thereupon, a colleague caught up a chair, put it beside that of the Premier, and sat down with the remark, "There is no such thing as a President of the Cabinet."'