He seated himself, opened the envelope, and forgot the crack of
muskets in the document it contained. This was the first constitution for
New Zealand, and he was instructed to introduce the same. He didn't; only
that is a very red-letter tale. It should be told simply, as Sir George
Grey told it.
'In the middle of the turmoil at Wanganui,' he stated, 'out comes a
constitution which had been passed by the British Parliament, and
published in the "Gazette." It was, you understand, to be the instrument
under which the New Zealand people should take their full, free place in
the Empire. Up to that date they had not been self-governing; the
Governor ruled. Well, having studied it carefully where I sat, I arrived
at the conclusion that it would not do at all.
'Conceive my surroundings! There I was, with Maori chiefs whom I had
brought from Auckland and Wellington. They trusted me; they were helping
me all they could to bring about a peace. This constitution, I
discovered, would destroy, at one stroke, a treaty--that of Waitangi,
which every Maori in New Zealand held to be sacred. It was a treaty
securing them in their lands; it was their Magna Charta in every respect.
Yet the constitution would go back upon all that, and I should be held
traitor to every one of my pledges to the Maoris.
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