XI THE THRILL OF GOVERNING

Nothing is small in the making of an empire.  It is the seeming trifles that often shape the way, fair or foul.  This was a clear article of faith in Sir George Grey, and he would give it picturesque sittings.  It had been with him wherever he carried the flag; it dotted Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa with milestones of policy.  These might not be visible to others, but he knew, having planted them.  They told of what had been done, by means of the little things; a bulwark against the undoing of the great things.  Ever, the handling of personal elements was the master touch, the vast secret.

Take Sir George’s entrance into the circle of Knights Commanders of the Bath, with Waka Nene and Te Puni for Esquires.  He was one of the youngest K.C.B.’s ever nominated, being only thirty-six, and he just preceded his old friend Sir James Stephen.  ‘It struck me as a great shame,’ his feeling had been, ’that one to whom I was so much attached, whose services to the State were so much longer than mine, should be made to follow me in the “Gazette.”  I could have cried over it.’

The notion of Esquires belongs, no doubt, to the truculent age when a brace of henchmen were useful beside the stirrup of a knight.  Sir George did not revive them, in New Zealand, as a body-guard in any warlike meaning.  Herein, there possibly lay a certain disappointment for his friends Waka Nene and Te Puni, both Maori chiefs of martial qualities.  The purpose was to identify the Maori people with a reward, which the Queen of England had conferred upon her representative in New Zealand.  ‘It is not for me alone,’ Sir George Grey put the honour, ’but for all of us in this distant part of the realm.  Therefore you, Waka Nene and Te Puni, shall join in the acceptance, in proof that the Queen forgets none of her subjects, no matter who they may be, or where they may dwell.’

This was a sprig of the policy which he felt must be pursued by an Empire called to boundless limits.  Did it rest its control of the nations, successively adopted into it, upon their fears, upon a compelled obedience?  Why, it would but grow the weaker as it spread, until eventually a time must arrive when, from its very vastness, it would fall into fragments.  On the other hand, if, as it spread its dominion, it also spread equal laws, the Christian faith, Christian knowledge, and Christian virtues, it would link firmly to itself, by the ties of love and gratitude, each nation it adopted.  Thus, it would grow in strength as it grew in area, its dominion being an object sought for, rather than submitted to impatiently.

Go into the engine-room of administration, and listen to the clatter of yon modest pinion in a corner!  That is, follow the avoidance of a peril in New Zealand, which might easily have sown more seeds of race warfare.  There had been a mysterious, deadly tragedy on the outskirts of Auckland, a retired naval lieutenant and his family the victims.  The affair profoundly moved the young community, having regard to the unrest which had been rife in the land.  Several natives were arrested as suspects, and Europeans put it to the Governor, ’We shall certainly all be murdered, unless you deal sharply with them.’