their way to forego, or he to forgive. Yet he
was, it must be confessed, a very trying leader.
His cloudy eloquence would not do for human nature’s
daily food. His opponents, Atkinson and Hall,
had not a tithe of his emotional power, but their
facts and figures riddled his fine speeches. Stout
and Ballance, lieutenants of talent and character,
became estranged from him; others of his friends were
enough to have damned any government. The leader
of a colonial party must have certain qualities which
Sir George Grey did not possess. He may dispense
with eloquence, but must be a debater; whether able
or not able to rouse public meetings, he must know
how to conduct wearisome and complicated business by
discussion; he must not only have a grasp of great
principles, but readiness to devote himself to the
mastery of uninteresting minds and unappetizing details;
above all, he must be generous and considerate to
lieutenants who have their own views and their own
followers, and who expect to have their full share
of credit and influence. In one word, he should
be what Ballance was and Grey was not. Nevertheless,
one of Grey’s courage, talent, and prestige was
not likely to fail to leave his mark upon the politics
of the country; nor did he. Though he failed
to pass the reforms just mentioned, he had the satisfaction
of seeing them adopted and carried into law, some
by his opponents, some by his friends. Only one
of his pet proposals seems to have been altogether
lost sight of, his oft-repeated demand that the Governor
of the Colony should be elected by the people.
The Grey Ministry had committed what in a Colonial
Cabinet is the one unpardonable crime—it
had encountered a commercial depression, with its
concomitant, a shrunken revenue. When Hall and
Atkinson succeeded Grey with a mission to abolish
the land-tax, they had at once to impose a different
but more severe burden. They also reduced—for
a time—the cost of the public departments
by the rough-and-ready method of knocking ten per
cent. off all salaries and wages paid by the treasury,
a method which, applied as it was at first equally
to low and high, had the unpopularity as well as the
simplicity of the poll-tax. That retrenchment
and fresh taxation were unpleasant necessities, and
that Hall and Atkinson more than once tackled the
disagreeable task of applying them, remains true and
to their credit.
Between 1880 and 1890 the colonists were for the most
part resolutely at work adapting themselves to the
new order of things—to lower prices and
slower progress. They increased their output of
wool and coal—the latter a compensation
for the falling-off of the gold. They found in
frozen meat an export larger and more profitable than
wheat. Later on they began, with marked success,
to organize co-operative dairy factories and send
cheese and butter to England. Public affairs
during the decade resolved themselves chiefly into
a series of expedients for filling the treasury and
carrying on the work of land settlement. Borrowing
went on, but more and more slowly. Times did not
soon get better.