Meanwhile he remained an autocrat.  Even an autocrat has his advisers, and in some of them he was fortunate.  Mr. William Swainson, his Attorney-General, was an English lawyer of striking abilities of more than one kind.  Fortunately one of these lay in drafting statutes.  On him devolved the drawing-up of the laws of the infant Colony.  In doing so he ventured to be much simpler in language and much less of a slave to technical subtleties than was usual in his day.  By an ordinance dealing with conveyancing he swept away a host of cumbrous English precedents relating to that great branch of law.  Other excellent enactments dealt with legal procedure and marriage.  Mr. Swainson’s ordinances were not only good in themselves, but set an example in New Zealand which later law reformers were only too glad to follow and improve upon.  Another official of ability and high character was Sir William Martin, Chief Justice, long known, not only as a refined gentleman and upright judge, but as an enthusiastic and unswerving champion of what he believed to be the rights of the Maori race.  But a more commanding figure than either Martin or Swainson was George Augustus Selwyn, the first Bishop of the Colony.  No better selection could have been made than that by which England sent this muscular Christian to organize and administer a Church of mingled savages and pioneers.  Bishop Selwyn was both physically and mentally a ruler of men.  When young, his tall, lithe frame, and long, clean-cut aquiline features were those of the finest type of English gentleman.  When old, the lines on his face marked honourably the unresting toil of the intellectual athlete.  Hard sometimes to others, he was always hardest to himself.  When in the wilderness, he could outride or outwalk his guides, and could press on when hunger made his companions flag wearily.  He would stride through rivers in his Bishop’s dress, and laugh at such trifles as wet clothes, and would trudge through the bush with his blankets rolled up on his back like any swag-man.  When at sea in his missionary schooner, he could haul on the ropes or take the helm—­and did so.[1] If his demeanour and actions savoured at times somewhat of the dramatic, and if he had more of iron than honey in his manner, it must be remembered that his duty lay in wild places and amongst rough men, where strength of will and force of character were more needed than gentler virtues.  For more than a generation he laboured strenuously amongst Maoris and Europeans, loved by many and respected by all.  He organized the Episcopal Church in New Zealand upon a basis which showed a rare insight into the democratic character of the community with which he had to deal.  The basis of his system is found in the representative synods of clergy and laity which assemble annually in each New Zealand diocese.  The first draft of this Church constitution came indeed from the brain and hand of Sir George Grey, but for the rest the credit of it belongs to Selwyn.