ABRAHAM, Charles John

by Maurice Russell Pirani, formerly Minor Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral Church, Wellington.

South Africa, 1854–61

In 1854 he was appointed Governor of Cape Colony and High Commissioner for South Africa. Here his principal task was to protect and pacify the eastern Cape frontier against a surging mass of disorderly Kaffir tribes. Supported by a large British army and a small annual parliamentary grant of £40,000, he planned to reorganise the tribal life of the buffer province of British Kaffraria under European Magistrates, civilise the African population by means of schools, hospitals, and employment (his old New Zealand formula), and introduce several thousands of white farmers to stiffen the defence of the frontier and provide work, and a good example, for the natives. But he miscalculated the amount of agricultural land available — the province was already over populated — and he seemed not to appreciate that amalgamation of the races must jeopardise white predominance. He wanted British immigrants, but South Africa did not attract them. After the Crimean War, the Colonial Office sent out 3,000 men of the German Military Legion, but they proved quite unsuitable as colonists and the venture was a fiasco.

Meanwhile, the Kaffirs became excited. War was pending between Basutoland and the Orange Free State. Prophets arose predicting the resurrection of defunct tribal ancestors and a new era of youth, beauty, and plenty for all black people who killed their cattle and stopped planting corn. Grey suspected that those chiefs who ordered obedience to the prophet were plotting to use famine as an excuse for war, and he instituted not only relief schemes but also stern police measures. The result of this fantastic episode (1856–57) was the devastation of British Kaffraria and the adjoining Transkeian country, the reduction of its native population to one-third, and the arrest and disgrace of the offending chiefs, and the abject submission of the others. Some 30,000 refugees were removed into the Western Province of the Cape, the Gcalekas were driven out beyond the Bashee River, and white farmers moved in to occupy the “empty” land. Grey's dispatches persuaded the Colonial Office that this was civilisation, and he wanted the system extended throughout Kaffraria, Natal, and Zululand.

Grey incurred official displeasure by sending too few regiments to India during the Mutiny (1857–58), keeping the German Legion mobilised at British expense, and overspending his British Kaffraria account during the 1856 crisis. He did not take kindly to criticism. The tone of his communications to London became curt, truculent, and defiant, and he lost the confidence of one Secretary of State after another. His crowning fault came when, contrary to orders, he broached the question of confederation with the Orange Free State. The idea had much to commend it, but he was trying to initiate a forward policy when the British Government was resolved on economy and withdrawal from responsibilities. He was recalled by Lytton in 1859, but was reinstated by the Duke of Newcastle with a warning that he must obey orders — a thing he never learned to do graciously. He once told his General that his duty to the Queen impelled him “to disregard or to act contrary to orders issued from the other side of the world, in entire ignorance” of local circumstances, and to treat them merely as “general indications of a line of policy” to be interpreted and modified at his discretion. But his independence went beyond any reasonable discretion that the Colonial Office could tolerate. As one Under-Secretary later wrote, it was impossible to let Grey “claim to hold his authority from the Crown on such terms that he was entitled to refuse obedience to the Home Government”.

New Zealand, 1861–68

Meanwhile, the first Taranaki war (1860–61) had broken out in New Zealand, and Grey was sent back in the hope that his influence with the Maoris might enable him to restore peace, or, if there were to be war, that he could win it quickly and dictate a humane settlement afterwards. The task proved beyond him. Certain tribes had lost faith in British justice and even Grey could not restore their belief. The settlers' demand for land was insatiable, and Maori resistance groups in the Waikato, Taranaki, and elsewhere were determined to prevent any extension of white settlement and white man's law. Grey wanted the Maori King party to recognise his authority as Governor, and offered them local self-government through their own runangas (councils). But he also urged them to open their lands to roads and white settlement, which made his offers suspect. And while he proffered peace, he prepared for war by moving troops into the lower Waikato and building military roads. His equivocal behaviour provoked renewed hostilities in Taranaki, Waikato rebelled, and the war spread through most of the North Island.

Grey was tired, overwrought, and too aware of his personal responsibilities. Moreover, he was now handicapped by having to deal with an elected General Assembly and a responsible Ministry. His efforts to retain direction of native policy and military affairs strained relations with his responsible advisers and produced complete deadlock during the Whitaker–Fox ministry (1864). He was on somewhat better terms with his next Prime Minister, F. A. Weld, but he became involved in a most acrimonious quarrel with the General Officer Commanding. When General Cameron set out deliberately to thwart the Wanganui-Taranaki campaign (1865) by “go-slow” tactics, Grey had the effrontery to come to the field of battle himself and capture Weraroa pa by means of colonial troops and friendly Maoris, after the General had said that attack would be too costly. Cameron criticised Grey and his Ministers in “secret” letters to the War Office, and the Home Government, accepting Cameron's view that the war was being fought at British expense for the profit of the colonists, ordered Grey to curtail the amount of land confiscation, stop the war, make the colony pay its share of the cost, and send the troops back to England. Grey believed that the colony was still in danger, and with the connivance of his last Prime Minister, E. W. Stafford, defied the Colonial Office and retained and employed the troops till the British Government had no option but to terminate his appointment (1868). “I do not imagine,” wrote the Duke of Buckingham, “he is likely to be re-employed!”

Later Career, 1868–98

After a short retirement to Kawau Island and a visit to England, where he failed in an attempt to enter Parliament as a Gladstonian Liberal, he re-emerged in New Zealand politics in 1874, as Superintendent of Auckland Province and member of the House of Representatives, in an unavailing effort to prevent the abolition of the provincial system of government. He continued in the House of Representatives for nearly 20 years, and was Prime Minister (1877–79), but his administration was defective and his leadership poor. He announced many of the principles of the later Liberal and Labour Parties (electoral reform, land tax, breaking up of large estates, regulation of wages and hours, education, etc.), but his ideas were too radical for his contemporaries and he failed to build up a party to implement his programme. His oratory was impressive, but often unduly maudlin and petulant, and too much given to declamation. “This,” he said, “is a revolt against despotism…. What I am resolved to maintain is this, that there shall be equal justice in representation and in the distribution of land and revenue to every class in New Zealand … equal rights to all — equal rights in education, equal rights in taxation, equal rights in representation … equal rights in every respect.” He would utter bitter personal recriminations against his political opponents, whom he was forever accusing of land jobbery, and he defied parliamentary etiquette by making personal attacks upon the Governor and the Secretary of State. “Keep your rank; keep your wealth; but do not send us out men who care nothing for us, with high titles, to make great fortunes out of us, and who refuse us dissolutions when constitutionally we are entitled to them. I say that of the Secretary of State we absolutely know nothing — for the Secretary of State we absolutely care nothing … He could confine himself to his own business.” His frequent lack of self-restraint earned for him Tancred's famous description of “a terrible and fatal man”.

In the realm of world affairs, Grey entertained visions of New Zealand expansion in the Pacific islands, and forecast with uncanny accuracy the development of the modern British Commonwealth as a group of autonomous States in friendly association with the United States of America.

He had a shrewd insight into the Maori mind, and his published collection of Maori legends is a classic. He bequeathed his large collection of writings on the African language, together with his library of incunabula and manuscripts to Cape Town in 1861, and later donated a second valuable collection to the city of Auckland. An amateur natural scientist of repute, he sent thousands of specimens of the flora and fauna to the British Museum and to Kew Gardens. His island domain of Kawau became a botanical and zoological experiment in the acclimatisation of plants and animals. Always keenly interested in education, his name is connected with many schools and institutions whose foundation and advancement he assisted, including Bloemfontein College, Auckland Grammar School, and Wanganui Collegiate.

Grey died in London on 19 September 1898, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. He was a strange mixture — a philanthropist impelled by altruistic motives, a visionary and a prophet, and a man of resolute, often dramatic, action. He made a real impression on those colonies in which he lived and ruled, especially in New Zealand where he spent the greater part of his life. In the final analysis, he fell short of greatness because he was too autocratic and egotistic in manner, lacked true self-control, and could never recognise his own mistakes. He pronounced judgment upon himself when, in November 1845, he boasted to the Maori chiefs assembled at Kororareka, “I never alter what I once say”. Yet, for all his failings, he earned the affection and respect of the colonists over whose destinies he presided, and especially the love of the Maori people, whose farewell message at his death was, “Horei Kerei, Aue! Ka nui matou aroha ki a koe” (“George Grey, alas! Great was our love for thee”).

by James Rutherford, M.A.(DURHAM), PH.D.(MICH.) (1906–63), Historian, Auckland.

Grey Collections (MSS), Cape Town, South Africa, and Auckland, New Zealand; Sir George Grey, K.C.B. (1812–1898), Rutherford, J. (1961); Crown Colony Government in New Zealand, McLintock, A. H. (1958); Origins of the Maori Wars, Sinclair, K. (1957).

GREY, Sir George

(1812–98).

Colonial Governor and politician.

A new biography of Grey, George appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Sir George Grey was the son of Lieutenant-Colonel George Grey, who was related to the Greys of Groby and the Earls of Stamford, and of Elizabeth, née Vignoles of County Westmeath, Ireland. He was born at Lisbon (14 April 1812) a few days after his father was killed at Badajoz. Educated at Guildford and Royal Military College, Sandhurst, he served in Ireland with 83rd Regiment (1830–36), gaining the rank of captain, but he found military life mentally and socially irksome. He made two exploratory expeditions in north-western Australia (1837–39), one to Hanover Bay and the other to Shark Bay, revealing great bravery and fortitude but poor judgment, and accomplishing little of geographical significance. Nevertheless they stimulated Grey's interest in the aborigines, and his report on how to civilise native peoples (1840) attracted favourable notice at the Colonial Office.

In 1839 he married Eliza Lucy, daughter of Sir Richard Spencer. Their only son died young in 1841. Husband and wife subsequently became estranged; they separated in 1860 and were not reconciled until 1896.

South Australia, 1840–45

In 1840, at the age of 28, he was appointed Governor of the newly founded colony of South Australia, and here he had to learn the art of public administration by painful experience. Confronted with the task of bringing the public expenditure within the small local revenue, in the next 18 months he cut down Government disbursements from about £150,000 a year to 40,000. His rigorous economies averted a financial crisis, stopped the mania of speculative land buying, and drove the colonists to the tasks of productive farming. But his methods gave grave offence to the settlers, and one Adelaide newspaper printed at the head of each issue the Shakespearean text, “Think upon GREY and let thy soul despair”. But being unhampered by an elected parliament, Grey and his nominated councillors could go their own way, outwardly unaffected by the public clamour. By 1845 the development of wheat farming had produced self-sufficiency, and copper mining outside Adelaide was bringing prosperity to the settlers. Grey's efforts to civilise the aborigines, however, by providing schools and fostering employment under the Europeans, made little headway.

New Zealand, 1845–53

His first New Zealand governorship (1845–53) was his greatest success. Reinforced by troops and money from England and aided by loyal Maoris, he suppressed the northern rebellion of Kawiti and Hone Heke by capturing Ruapekapeka pa (1846). A desultory campaign in the Wellington region ended with the arrest of Te Rauparaha (1846), and there was some indecisive fighting at Wanganui in 1847. Thereafter Grey kept the peace by establishing friendly relations with the leading chiefs and by scrupulously respecting their land rights. His cautious land-purchase operations opened up ample areas for colonisation in the South Island and in the Wellington and Hawke's Bay districts, but the needs of Auckland and Taranaki were less well satisfied. He dealt harshly with some of the pre-1840 land claimants, particularly James Busby and the missionaries Henry Williams, George Clarke, and James Kemp, and his animus and unscrupulousness marked him as a petty tyrant.

His wilfulness was again evident in 1846 when Earl Grey proposed to introduce representative Government. Grey warned him that this would precipitate a general Maori war as the colonists were still only a minority and unfit to be trusted with powers of self-government. The British Government drew back in alarm, awarded him a knighthood, and left him in unfettered control for another five years. By then, he had drafted his own proposals for a quasi-federal constitution with elected parliaments both at provincial and at colonial levels, and these ideas were substantially embodied in the 1852 Constitution Act. He brought the provincial institutions into existence, but left New Zealand in December 1853 without having convened the first General Assembly.

Grey's reputation in London rested chiefly on his apparent success with the Maoris. Many colonists, especially in the Cook Strait and Canterbury settlements, alleged that his philanthropy was all humbug and that Maori advancement was a myth created by clever dispatch writing. But in this respect his critics did him less than justice. Grey had, after all, won the confidence of most of the principal chiefs of New Zealand. His benevolence was genuine and practical, and his contribution to the progress of the native race was real. The peace he established and maintained was a valuable breathing space in which Maoris and Pakehas could take stock of one another, and think and act in terms of mutual welfare. Grey encouraged and subsidised mission schools in town and country. He set up Magistrates' Courts in native districts and persuaded the Maoris to resort to them for remedy instead of taking the law into their own hands. He encouraged them to grow corn, mill flour, and engage in peaceful trades.

In favoured areas like the Waikato, Otaki, and Nelson, their progress and prosperity proved beyond doubt the capacity of the Maoris to adapt themselves to western ways. The transformation, of course, was very far from complete. The means at Grey's disposal were woefully scanty, many Maori tribes remained untouched by the new developments, and the colonists were for the most part ominously hostile to his benevolent plans, especially when it came to paying for them. Grey was unduly optimistic and did not sufficiently realise either the limits of his achievement or the danger of a relapse. A little self-praise might be forgiven, though it was in bad taste; but his task had only just begun and there was no room for complacency.

South Africa, 1854–61

In 1854 he was appointed Governor of Cape Colony and High Commissioner for South Africa. Here his principal task was to protect and pacify the eastern Cape frontier against a surging mass of disorderly Kaffir tribes. Supported by a large British army and a small annual parliamentary grant of £40,000, he planned to reorganise the tribal life of the buffer province of British Kaffraria under European Magistrates, civilise the African population by means of schools, hospitals, and employment (his old New Zealand formula), and introduce several thousands of white farmers to stiffen the defence of the frontier and provide work, and a good example, for the natives. But he miscalculated the amount of agricultural land available — the province was already over populated — and he seemed not to appreciate that amalgamation of the races must jeopardise white predominance. He wanted British immigrants, but South Africa did not attract them. After the Crimean War, the Colonial Office sent out 3,000 men of the German Military Legion, but they proved quite unsuitable as colonists and the venture was a fiasco.

Meanwhile, the Kaffirs became excited. War was pending between Basutoland and the Orange Free State. Prophets arose predicting the resurrection of defunct tribal ancestors and a new era of youth, beauty, and plenty for all black people who killed their cattle and stopped planting corn. Grey suspected that those chiefs who ordered obedience to the prophet were plotting to use famine as an excuse for war, and he instituted not only relief schemes but also stern police measures. The result of this fantastic episode (1856–57) was the devastation of British Kaffraria and the adjoining Transkeian country, the reduction of its native population to one-third, and the arrest and disgrace of the offending chiefs, and the abject submission of the others. Some 30,000 refugees were removed into the Western Province of the Cape, the Gcalekas were driven out beyond the Bashee River, and white farmers moved in to occupy the “empty” land. Grey's dispatches persuaded the Colonial Office that this was civilisation, and he wanted the system extended throughout Kaffraria, Natal, and Zululand.

Grey incurred official displeasure by sending too few regiments to India during the Mutiny (1857–58), keeping the German Legion mobilised at British expense, and overspending his British Kaffraria account during the 1856 crisis. He did not take kindly to criticism. The tone of his communications to London became curt, truculent, and defiant, and he lost the confidence of one Secretary of State after another. His crowning fault came when, contrary to orders, he broached the question of confederation with the Orange Free State. The idea had much to commend it, but he was trying to initiate a forward policy when the British Government was resolved on economy and withdrawal from responsibilities. He was recalled by Lytton in 1859, but was reinstated by the Duke of Newcastle with a warning that he must obey orders — a thing he never learned to do graciously. He once told his General that his duty to the Queen impelled him “to disregard or to act contrary to orders issued from the other side of the world, in entire ignorance” of local circumstances, and to treat them merely as “general indications of a line of policy” to be interpreted and modified at his discretion. But his independence went beyond any reasonable discretion that the Colonial Office could tolerate. As one Under-Secretary later wrote, it was impossible to let Grey “claim to hold his authority from the Crown on such terms that he was entitled to refuse obedience to the Home Government”.

New Zealand, 1861–68

Meanwhile, the first Taranaki war (1860–61) had broken out in New Zealand, and Grey was sent back in the hope that his influence with the Maoris might enable him to restore peace, or, if there were to be war, that he could win it quickly and dictate a humane settlement afterwards. The task proved beyond him. Certain tribes had lost faith in British justice and even Grey could not restore their belief. The settlers' demand for land was insatiable, and Maori resistance groups in the Waikato, Taranaki, and elsewhere were determined to prevent any extension of white settlement and white man's law. Grey wanted the Maori King party to recognise his authority as Governor, and offered them local self-government through their own runangas (councils). But he also urged them to open their lands to roads and white settlement, which made his offers suspect. And while he proffered peace, he prepared for war by moving troops into the lower Waikato and building military roads. His equivocal behaviour provoked renewed hostilities in Taranaki, Waikato rebelled, and the war spread through most of the North Island.

Grey was tired, overwrought, and too aware of his personal responsibilities. Moreover, he was now handicapped by having to deal with an elected General Assembly and a responsible Ministry. His efforts to retain direction of native policy and military affairs strained relations with his responsible advisers and produced complete deadlock during the Whitaker–Fox ministry (1864). He was on somewhat better terms with his next Prime Minister, F. A. Weld, but he became involved in a most acrimonious quarrel with the General Officer Commanding. When General Cameron set out deliberately to thwart the Wanganui-Taranaki campaign (1865) by “go-slow” tactics, Grey had the effrontery to come to the field of battle himself and capture Weraroa pa by means of colonial troops and friendly Maoris, after the General had said that attack would be too costly. Cameron criticised Grey and his Ministers in “secret” letters to the War Office, and the Home Government, accepting Cameron's view that the war was being fought at British expense for the profit of the colonists, ordered Grey to curtail the amount of land confiscation, stop the war, make the colony pay its share of the cost, and send the troops back to England. Grey believed that the colony was still in danger, and with the connivance of his last Prime Minister, E. W. Stafford, defied the Colonial Office and retained and employed the troops till the British Government had no option but to terminate his appointment (1868). “I do not imagine,” wrote the Duke of Buckingham, “he is likely to be re-employed!”

Later Career, 1868–98

After a short retirement to Kawau Island and a visit to England, where he failed in an attempt to enter Parliament as a Gladstonian Liberal, he re-emerged in New Zealand politics in 1874, as Superintendent of Auckland Province and member of the House of Representatives, in an unavailing effort to prevent the abolition of the provincial system of government. He continued in the House of Representatives for nearly 20 years, and was Prime Minister (1877–79), but his administration was defective and his leadership poor. He announced many of the principles of the later Liberal and Labour Parties (electoral reform, land tax, breaking up of large estates, regulation of wages and hours, education, etc.), but his ideas were too radical for his contemporaries and he failed to build up a party to implement his programme. His oratory was impressive, but often unduly maudlin and petulant, and too much given to declamation. “This,” he said, “is a revolt against despotism…. What I am resolved to maintain is this, that there shall be equal justice in representation and in the distribution of land and revenue to every class in New Zealand … equal rights to all — equal rights in education, equal rights in taxation, equal rights in representation … equal rights in every respect.” He would utter bitter personal recriminations against his political opponents, whom he was forever accusing of land jobbery, and he defied parliamentary etiquette by making personal attacks upon the Governor and the Secretary of State. “Keep your rank; keep your wealth; but do not send us out men who care nothing for us, with high titles, to make great fortunes out of us, and who refuse us dissolutions when constitutionally we are entitled to them. I say that of the Secretary of State we absolutely know nothing — for the Secretary of State we absolutely care nothing … He could confine himself to his own business.” His frequent lack of self-restraint earned for him Tancred's famous description of “a terrible and fatal man”.

In the realm of world affairs, Grey entertained visions of New Zealand expansion in the Pacific islands, and forecast with uncanny accuracy the development of the modern British Commonwealth as a group of autonomous States in friendly association with the United States of America.

He had a shrewd insight into the Maori mind, and his published collection of Maori legends is a classic. He bequeathed his large collection of writings on the African language, together with his library of incunabula and manuscripts to Cape Town in 1861, and later donated a second valuable collection to the city of Auckland. An amateur natural scientist of repute, he sent thousands of specimens of the flora and fauna to the British Museum and to Kew Gardens. His island domain of Kawau became a botanical and zoological experiment in the acclimatisation of plants and animals. Always keenly interested in education, his name is connected with many schools and institutions whose foundation and advancement he assisted, including Bloemfontein College, Auckland Grammar School, and Wanganui Collegiate.

Grey died in London on 19 September 1898, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. He was a strange mixture — a philanthropist impelled by altruistic motives, a visionary and a prophet, and a man of resolute, often dramatic, action. He made a real impression on those colonies in which he lived and ruled, especially in New Zealand where he spent the greater part of his life. In the final analysis, he fell short of greatness because he was too autocratic and egotistic in manner, lacked true self-control, and could never recognise his own mistakes. He pronounced judgment upon himself when, in November 1845, he boasted to the Maori chiefs assembled at Kororareka, “I never alter what I once say”. Yet, for all his failings, he earned the affection and respect of the colonists over whose destinies he presided, and especially the love of the Maori people, whose farewell message at his death was, “Horei Kerei, Aue! Ka nui matou aroha ki a koe” (“George Grey, alas! Great was our love for thee”).

by James Rutherford, M.A.(DURHAM), PH.D.(MICH.) (1906–63), Historian, Auckland.

Grey Collections (MSS), Cape Town, South Africa, and Auckland, New Zealand; Sir George Grey, K.C.B. (1812–1898), Rutherford, J. (1961); Crown Colony Government in New Zealand, McLintock, A. H. (1958); Origins of the Maori Wars, Sinclair, K. (1957).

GREY, Sir George

(1812–98).

Colonial Governor and politician.

A new biography of Grey, George appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

Sir George Grey was the son of Lieutenant-Colonel George Grey, who was related to the Greys of Groby and the Earls of Stamford, and of Elizabeth, née Vignoles of County Westmeath, Ireland. He was born at Lisbon (14 April 1812) a few days after his father was killed at Badajoz. Educated at Guildford and Royal Military College, Sandhurst, he served in Ireland with 83rd Regiment (1830–36), gaining the rank of captain, but he found military life mentally and socially irksome. He made two exploratory expeditions in north-western Australia (1837–39), one to Hanover Bay and the other to Shark Bay, revealing great bravery and fortitude but poor judgment, and accomplishing little of geographical significance. Nevertheless they stimulated Grey's interest in the aborigines, and his report on how to civilise native peoples (1840) attracted favourable notice at the Colonial Office.

In 1839 he married Eliza Lucy, daughter of Sir Richard Spencer. Their only son died young in 1841. Husband and wife subsequently became estranged; they separated in 1860 and were not reconciled until 1896.

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ABRAHAM, Charles John 22-Apr-09 Maurice Russell Pirani, formerly Minor Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral Church, Wellington.