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.
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