LEARNING TO WALK
"Some therefore cried one thing and some another; for the
Assembly was confused; and the more part knew not wherefore
they were come together."
The Constitution under which the colonists were granted the management
of their own affairs was partly based on Grey's suggestions, though
it was drafted in England by Mr. Adderley under Gibbon Wakefield's
supervision. Its quality may be judged from its duration. It worked
almost without alteration for twenty-two years, and in the main well.
Thereafter it was much cut about and altered. Briefly described, it
provided the Colony with a dual system of self-government under
a Viceroy appointed by the Colonial Office, who was to be
Commander-in-Chief of the Queen's forces in the Colony, and might
reserve Bills for the consideration of Her Majesty--in effect for
that of the Home Government. Under this proviso laws restricting
immigration from other parts of the Empire or affecting mercantile
marine have, it may be mentioned, been sometimes reserved and vetoed.
Foreign affairs and currency were virtually excluded from the scope
of the Colonial Government. The Viceroy might use his judgment in
granting or withholding dissolutions of Parliament. Side by side
with the central Parliament were to exist a number of provincial
assemblies. The central Parliament was to have two Chambers, the
Provincial Councils one. Over the Parliament was to be the
Viceroy ruling through Ministers; over each Provincial Council, a
superintendent elected, like the Councils, by the people of his
province. Each superintendent was to have a small executive of
officials, who were themselves to be councillors--a sort of small
Cabinet. The central Parliament, called the General Assembly, was to
have an Upper House called the Legislative Council, whose members
were, Grey suggested, to be elected by the Provincial Councils. But in
England, Sir John Pakington demurred to this, and decided that they
should be nominated for life by the Crown. Their number was not fixed
by law. Had Grey's proposal been carried out, New Zealand would have
had a powerful Senate eclipsing altogether the Lower Chamber. The
thirty-seven members of the Lower House were, of course, to be
elected--on a franchise liberal though not universal. To be eligible,
a member must be qualified to have his name on an electoral roll, and
not have been convicted of any infamous offence, and would lose his
seat by bankruptcy. Until 1880 the ordinary duration of Parliament was
five years. The Provinces numbered six: Auckland, Taranaki,
Nelson, Wellington, Canterbury, and Otago. Maoris had no special
representation. They might register as landowners, and vote with the
white electors, but as a matter of fact not many did so, and after a
foolish and unfair delay of fifteen years they were given four
members solely chosen by Maoris, and who must themselves be Maoris or
half-castes. Two of their chiefs were at the same time called to the
Legislative Council.
In 1853, the year of the land regulations, the Governor was entrusted
with the task of proclaiming the constitution. He took the rather
curious course of bringing the Provincial Councils into existence, and
leaving the summoning of the central Parliament to his successor. He
left the Colony in December of the same year, praised and regretted
by the Maoris, regarded by the settlers with mixed feelings.
Nevertheless, it would not be easy now to find any one who would
refuse a very high meed of praise to Governor Grey's first
administration. It was not merely that he found the Colony on the
brink of ruin, and left it in a state of prosperity and progress. Able
subalterns, a rise in prices, the development of some new industry,
might have brought about the improvement. Such causes have often made
reputation for colonial rulers and statesmen. But in Grey's case no
impartial student can fail to see that to a considerable extent the
change for the better was due to him. Moreover, he not only grappled
with the difficulties of his time, but with both foresight and
power of imagination built for the future, and--with one marked
exception--laid foundations deep and well.
If the Colonial Office did not see its way to retain Grey in the
Colony until his constitution had been put into full working order,
it should, at least, have seen that he was replaced by a capable
official. This was not done. His successor did not arrive for two
years, and meanwhile the Vice-regal office devolved upon Colonel
Wynyard, a good-natured soldier, unfitted for the position. The first
Parliament of New Zealand was summoned, and met at Auckland on the
Queen's birthday in 1854. Many, perhaps most, of its members were
well-educated men of character and capacity. The presence of Gibbon
Wakefield, now himself become a colonist, added to the interest of
the scene. At last, those who had been agitating so long for
self-government had the boon apparently within their grasp. In their
eyes it was a great occasion--the true commencement of national life
in the Colony. The irony of fate, or the perversity of man, turned it
into a curious anticlimax. The Parliament, indeed, duly assembled. But
it dispersed after weeks of ineffectual wrangling and intrigue, amid
scenes which were discreditable and are still ridiculous. Those who
had drawn up the constitution had forgotten that Government, through
responsible Ministers forming a Cabinet and possessing the confidence
of the elective Chamber, must be a necessary part of their system. Not
only was no provision made for it in the written constitution, but the
Colonial Office had sent the Governor no instructions on the subject.
The Viceroy was surrounded by Patent Officers, some of whom had been
administering since the first days of the Colony. No place of refuge
had been prepared for them, and, naturally, they were not going to
surrender their posts without a struggle. Colonel Wynyard was wax in
the hands of the cleverest of these--Mr. Attorney-General Swainson.
When the Parliament met, he asked three members to join with his old
advisers in forming a Cabinet. They agreed to do so, and one of
them, Mr. James Edward Fitzgerald, a Canterbury settler of brilliant
abilities, figured as the Colony's first Premier. An Irish gentleman,
an orator and a wit, he was about as fitted to cope with the peculiar
and delicate imbroglio before him as Murat would have been to conceive
and direct one of Napoleon's campaigns. In a few weeks he and his
Parliamentary colleagues came to loggerheads with the old officials
in the Cabinet, and threw up the game. Then came prorogation for a
fortnight and another hybrid ministry, known to New Zealand history as
the "Clean-Shirt Ministry," because its leader ingenuously informed
Parliament that when asked by the Governor to form an administration,
he had gone upstairs to put on a clean shirt before presenting himself
at Government House. The Clean-Shirt Ministry lived for just two days.
It was born and died amid open recrimination and secret wire-pulling,
throughout which Mr. Attorney Swainson, who had got himself made
Speaker of the Upper House while retaining his post as the Governor's
legal adviser, and Mr. Gibbon Wakefield, who was ostensibly nothing
but a private member of the Lower House, pulled the strings behind
the scenes. Wakefield began by putting himself at the head of the
agitation for responsible Ministers. When later, after negotiating
with the Governor's _entourage_, he tried compromise, the majority of
the House turned angrily upon him. At last a compromise was arrived
at. Colonel Wynyard was to go on with his Patent Officers until a Bill
could be passed and assented to in England establishing responsible
government; then the old officials were to be pensioned off and
shelved. At one stage in this singular session, the Governor sent a
message to the House written on sheets of paper, one of the leaves of
which the clerk found to be missing. Gibbon Wakefield thereupon coolly
pulled the missing portion out of his pocket and proposed to hand
it in--a piece of effrontery which the House could not stomach. On
another occasion the door of the House had to be locked to prevent
the minority running away to force on a count-out, and one honourable
member assaulted another with his fists. Australia laughed at the
scene, which, it may here be said, has never been repeated in the
New Zealand Legislature. The greatest man in the Parliament was the
greatest failure of the session. Gibbon Wakefield left Auckland
unpopular and distrusted. Soon afterwards his health broke down, and
the rest of his life was passed in strict retirement in the Colony
which he had founded and in which he died.
The Colonial Office snubbed Colonel Wynyard and Mr. Swainson, and
informed them that responsible government could be initiated without
an Act of Parliament. A year, however, passed before the General
Assembly was summoned together, and then it merely did formal work, as
the Acting-Governor had taken upon himself to ordain that there
should be a dissolution previous to the establishment of responsible
Ministers. This put everything off till the middle of 1856, by which
time Colonel Wynyard had left the Colony. To his credit be it noted
that he had kept out of native wars. Moreover, in his time, thanks to
the brisk trade caused by the gold discoveries in Australia and the
progress of sheep-farming in the South Island, the Colony was waxing
prosperous.
The second Parliament met in 1856, and still for a time there was
confusion. First, Mr. Sewell formed a ministry which lived for
thirteen days; then Sir William Fox another which existed for thirteen
days more. After that, Sir Edward Stafford took the helm and made
headway. A loan of £600,000 was the fair wind which filled his
sails. Judgment in choosing colleagues and officials, very fair
administrative abilities, attention to business, and an indisposition
to push things to extremes in the House were some of the qualities
which enabled him to retain office for four years, and to regain it
more than once afterwards. Until 1873 he and his rival, Mr. Fox,
were considered inevitable members of almost any combination. Native
affairs were in the forefront during that period. Mr. Fox, the most
impulsive, pugnacious, and controversial of politicians, usually
headed the peace party; Sir Edward Stafford, much more easy going in
ordinary politics, was usually identified with those who held that
peace could only be secured by successful war.
The other principal moving cause in public affairs between 1856 and
1876 was the Provincial system. That had had much to do with the
confusion of the sessions of 1854 and 1856. Then and afterwards
members were not so much New Zealanders, or Liberals, or
Conservatives, as they were Aucklanders, or men of Otago, or some
other Province. The hot vigorous local life which Provincial
institutions intensified was in itself an admirable thing. But it
engendered a mild edition of the feelings which set Greek States and
Italian cities at each others' throats. From the first many colonists
were convinced that Provincialism was unnatural and must go. But for
twenty years the friends of the Provinces were usually ready to
forego quarrelling with each other when the Centralists in Parliament
threatened the Councils. There were able men in the Colony who devoted
their energies by preference to Provincial politics. Such was Dr.
Featherston, who was for eighteen years the trusted superintendent of
Wellington, and who, paternally despotic there, watched and influenced
Parliament, and was ever vigilant on the Provinces' behalf.
In truth the Provinces had been charged with important functions. The
management and sale of Crown lands, education, police, immigration,
laws relating to live-stock and timber, harbours, the making of roads
and bridges--almost the entire work of colonization--came within their
scope. By a "compact" arrived at in the session of 1856 each Province
was in effect given the entire control of its public lands--an immense
advantage to those of the South Island, where these were neither
forest-covered nor in Maori hands. On the other hand, it would have
been grossly unfair to confiscate them for general purposes. The
Wakefield system in Canterbury would have been unbearable had the
£2 paid by the settlers for each acre been sent away to be spent
elsewhere. The Wakefield price was a local tax, charged and submitted
to to get a revenue to develop the lands for which it was paid. As
it was, half a crown an acre was handed over by each Province to the
Central Treasury as a contribution for national purposes. Loans were
also raised by Parliament to buy native land for the North Island
Provinces.
On the other hand, the Provinces enjoyed their land revenue--when
there was any--their pastoral rents, a dog tax, and such fag-ends of
customs revenue as the central Government could spare them. Their
condition was quite unequal. Canterbury, with plenty of high-priced
land, could more than dispense with aid from the centre. Other
Provinces, with little or no land revenue, were mortified by having
to appear at Wellington as suppliants for special grants. When the
Provinces borrowed money for the work of development, they had to pay
higher rates of interest than the Colony would have had. Finally, the
colonial treasurer had not only to finance for one large Colony, but
for half a dozen smaller governments, and ultimately to guarantee
their debts. No wonder that one of her premiers has said that New
Zealand was a severe school of statesmanship.
Yet for many years the ordinary dissensions of Liberal and Tory, of
classes and the parties of change and conservatism, were hardly seen
in the Parliament which sat at Auckland until 1864 and thereafter at
Wellington. Throughout the settlements labour as a rule was in
demand, often able to dictate its own terms, nomadic, and careless of
politics. The land question was relegated to the Provincial councils,
where round it contending classes and rival theories were grouped.
It was in some of the councils, notably that of Otago, that the
mutterings of Radicalism began first to be heard. The rapid change
which bred a parliamentary Radical party after the fall of the
Provinces in 1876 was the inevitable consequence of the transfer of
the land problem to the central legislature and the destruction of
those local safety-valves--the councils. Meanwhile, the ordinary lines
of division were not found in the central legislature. According as
this or that question came into the foreground, parties and groups in
the House of Representatives shifted and changed like the cloud shown
to Polonius. Politics made strange bedfellows; Cabinets were sometimes
the oddest hybrids. One serviceably industrious lawyer, Mr. Henry
Sewell, was something or other in nine different Ministries between
1854 and 1872. The premier of one year might be a subordinate minister
the next; or some subtle and persistent nature, like that of Sir
Frederick Whitaker, might manage chiefs whom he appeared to follow,
and be the guiding mind of parties which he did not profess to direct.
Lookers-on asked for more stable executives and more definite lines of
cleavage. Newly arrived colonists impatiently summed it all up as mere
battling of Ins against Outs, and lamented the sweet simplicity of
political divisions as they had known them in the mother country.