‘The settlement of King George’s Sound,’ he said, ’was quite small, and I discharged all the duties of the State.  I don’t remember that I fined anybody; just decreeing:  “Oh, you must make up your disputes yourselves.”  Perth, now so grown, was at that date a mere townlet.  It had few people, ships called rarely, and practically it was shut off from the world.’

This was the brand-new Australia.  Beside it, there is a glimpse of olden England, in the manner Sir George Grey was bid to be Pro-Consul.  A special messenger pelted down to Bodiam, where, after his return to England, he had been staying for a month, the hero of his relatives.  The messenger brought the other London, news that the guns of the Tower had been firing, to announce the birth of the Queen’s first child, the Princess Royal.  Therefore his arrival caused a double commotion in the family circle, two notes of joy and gratulation.  Sir George posted express to London, changing horses at short stages in order to make the better speed.

It was his supreme wish to serve the Colonies, and he had a glimmering notion that the chance would come.  Still, he was at one of the crossings in a young man’s life, when it is hard to know what the road is to be.  He had always his commission in the army, but was that his definite signpost?  He sighed for a wider door of usefulness, and behold it opened!  That it should be open so soon, was, perhaps, remarkable, only the word was to be his constant accomplice.

‘I had never met Lord John Russell, who made me the offer,’ Sir George explained.  ’He was going upon what little I had done, in regard to Australian affairs, especially a kind of despatch by me on native administration.  After adequate thought, and acting upon good advice, I confirmed my first resolve to accept the Governor-ship of South Australia.  It was, apparently, to be an onerous post.’

To Adelaide went this Queen’s Governor, not yet thirty, his mission the undoing of a tangle; for South Australia was on the verge of bankruptcy, almost before it had entered into business.  Hardly an acre of land was in cultivation, and most of the people were in Adelaide with nothing to do, clamouring for food.  Sir George perceived at once that they must be got on to the land.  To have the settlers securely there, from the first, meant that they were to grow into a nation, not to amass temporary riches, and then return to an already overcrowded world.

Again, in South Australia, as elsewhere, he endeavoured to carry out what he regarded as a cardinal principle in the making of a new country.  This was to draw capital direct from the soil, not by the raising of too heavy loans.  How to rear a nation?  Keep its conditions of life natural, even simple; make it self-creative and self-reliant, train it as if it were an individual.  Let it build its national homestead, as a man might lay out his own little stance of ground.  Then, the community would have the parents’ love and pride towards all that had been created.  Sir George put his shoulder to the wheel of the settlers’ cart in South Australia, and shoved until the harvest drove home.