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