ABSTRACT
Not only Bright but Molesworth and Gladstone spoke or voted the same way. Grey, it is true, shared their ideas to the extent of not wishing to spend more money than he could help; nor did he believe, as some have done since, in extending Imperial responsibilities light-heartedly.2 But he did not accept Cobden's false antithesis between the work of the social reformer at home and of the missionary or colonial official a broad; and he had a clear idea of the ultimate aim in the government of native races-namely their civilization. Where white settlement was impossible or undesirable, as in the Gold Coast Protectorate, the territory should ultimately be handed over to the native races-though not until our obligations were fulfilled. 'The true policy I believe to be ... to keep constantly in sight the formation of a regular government on the European model, and the
Grey seems to have held similar views of the ultimate destiny of the parts of South Africa inhabited solely by natives. Where white settlements already existed-whether they were the plantations of Ceylon or the West Indies, or the farms of New Zealand or South Mrica-his aim was an 'amalgamation of the races', not so much, it would appear, an intermixture as the formation of a unified society, such as exists to a great extent to-day in New Zealand.2 He believed this to be the only alternative to the eventual destruction of the weaker race; and it was all the easier for him to aim at it because the aristocratic form remained the most typical of civilized society.
