’Then I consulted my Executive Council, and I found it the autocrat, unwilling to let me do anything at all.  I believed that, if left to myself, I could fashion something which would secure the gratitude of New Zealand for all time.  I fancied I was capable of that:  as I had visions of a new form of constitution being helpful, far beyond New Zealand.  In the end, when my thoughts had bent to a shape, I went up into the mountains between Auckland and Wellington, camped on Ruapehu, in a little gipsy tent, and set to the task.  A few Maoris accompanied me to carry the baggage; nobody else, for I could not have drawn the constitution with a cloud of advisers about me.

’Where did I get my inspiration?  Oh, by talking to the hills and trees, from long walks, and many hints from the United States constitution.  I sought a scheme of government which should be broad, free, charged with a young nation’s vitality.  But the greatest merit of my constitution, was that the people of New Zealand could alter it at any point, should they desire to do so.  That was why it appeared to me unnecessary to ask a number of leading men:  Did they approve what I was doing?  I aimed at a most liberal constitution, and they could change it to their wishes as time went on.’

Sir George held man’s highest education to be that, which taught him the rights and duties of citizenship.  No call could be more noble; indeed, here was the essence of all service and religion.  Therefore, he conceived the best system of government, to be one wherein the opportunities for the exercise of citizenship were the fullest.  What could be more pathetic than the cramping of aspirations, such as had been seen in the case of Ireland?  It was as if the roots of a tree were half destroyed, so preventing the full flow of strength into the trunk.

Sir George Grey’s New Zealand constitution was thus inspired.  There was in it the breath of the mountains; to which he had gone, as the great law-giver of the Jews went up into them to pray.  It proclaimed a minute self-government, ending in a central Parliament.  The powers in London approved it, with a modification which, looking backward, he pronounced a vital wound.  He made both the Houses of Parliament elective; the modification made one nominative.  It spoiled the fabric of his handiwork.

‘The kernel of my plan,’ he said, ’was a form of complete home rule, denominated in provinces.  My idea was to give all the localities the right to levy their own taxes, and establish their own immediate rules.  The great landowners were always antagonistic to this, believing that these councils would tax them, when a single Parliament, by the influence they might assert upon it, especially through a nominated Upper House, would not do so.  Such was the force which, twenty years later, led to the destruction of the New Zealand Provincial Councils.’

The old war-horse was not neighing for the fray, that being all over; he was just putting his footnote to a piece of history he had fashioned.  It suggested another.  The Duke of Newcastle was concerned in the drawing up of the Canadian constitution.  He informed the author of the New Zealand one, that he had been largely indebted to it.  Mention of the Duke brought a smile on Sir George’s lips, but he had doubts whether he should divulge the cause.