The Colony’s chief export now came to be wool.  The wool-growers looked upon their industry as the backbone of the country.  So, at any rate, for many years it was.  But then the system of huge pastoral leases meant the exclusion of population from the soil.  A dozen shepherds and labourers were enough for the largest run during most of the year.  Only when the sheep had to be mustered and dipped or shorn were a band of wandering workmen called in.  The work done, they tramped off to undertake the next station, or to drink their wages at the nearest public-house.

The endowed churches, the great pastoral leases, high-priced land (in Canterbury), and the absence of Maori troubles, were the peculiar features of the southern settlements of New Zealand.  These new communities, while adding greatly to the strength and value of the Colony as a whole, brought their own special difficulties to its rulers.  With rare exceptions the settlers came from England and Scotland, not from Australia, and were therefore quite unused to despotic government.  Having no Maori tribes in overwhelming force at their doors, they saw no reason why they should not at once be trusted with self-government.  They therefore threw themselves heartily into the agitation for a free constitution, which by this time was in full swing in Wellington amongst the old settlers of the New Zealand Company.  Moreover, in this, for the first time in the history of the Colony, the settlers were in accord with the Colonial Office.  As early as 1846, Earl Grey had sent out the draft of a constitution the details of which need not detain us, inasmuch as it never came to the birth.  Sir George Grey refused to proclaim it, and succeeded in postponing the coming-in of free institutions for six years For many reasons he was probably right, if only because the Maoris still much outnumbered the Whites; yet under Earl Grey’s proposed constitution they would have been entirely governed by the white minority.  Warlike and intelligent, and with a full share of self-esteem, they were not a race likely to put up with such an indignity.  But Governor Grey’s action, though justifiable, brought him into collision with the southern settlers.  Godley, with questionable discretion, flung himself into the constitutional controversy.

Grey was successful in inducing the Maoris to sell a fair amount of their surplus land.  During the last years of his rule and the four or five years after he went, some millions of acres were bought in the North Island.  This, following on the purchase of the whole of the South Island, had opened the way for real progress.  The huge estate thus gained by the Crown brought to the front new phases of the eternal land problem.  The question had to be faced as to what were to be the terms under which this land was to be sold and leased to the settlers.  Up to 1852 the settlers everywhere, except in Auckland, had to deal, not with the Crown, but with the New Zealand Company.  But in 1852 the Company was