ABSTRACT
THE accession of Lord Grey to office in 1846 was felt, as has already been said, to be a triumph for Colonial Reform; and the wide range of his measures in his first year of office seemed to justify the hopes of the reformers. ‘There are,’ said The Times early in 1847, ‘a stir and movement about the Colonial Office indicative of great events.’ 1 Responsible government conceded to Canada and Nova Scotia; a new constitution bestowed upon New Zealand and projected for the Australian colonies and the Cape; a comprehensive plan of colonization sent out with Lord Elgin to Canada; the New Zealand Company revivified; transportation in its old form abandoned; the colonies empowered to abolish the preferential duties imposed by the Possessions Acts—surely the list of measures was long enough to satisfy the most ardent disciple of Colonial Reform. But the effect of these measures was not commensurate with the expectations that they had excited. The political concessions to the North American colonies—the most far-reaching of all—were not made public until 1848, when they had taken full effect. When the Canadian Liberals were on the eve of success The Spectator could accuse Lord Elgin of having ‘so managed as to make them believe that he resorted to a general election for the purpose of diminishing their minority, and with an anxious individual wish for their defeat’. 2 The economic grievances of the West Indies, which after the crisis in the autumn of 1847 forced themselves on public notice—the stubborn opposition of the judges to the plan for the abolition of transportation—the miscarriage of the New Zealand Constitution Act—the defeat of the ambitious schemes of systematic colonization—impressed opinion rather with the shortcomings of Lord Grey's policy. Grey's own views began to change on some points, and on others experience awoke disturbing doubts. ‘It is mortifying to the last degree,’ he wrote to Buller as early as 23 February 1847, ‘but I am beginning to come to the conclusion that I can do nothing to promote “systematic colonization”. There is not a farthing to be had from the Treasury, and without some money to start with very little seems possible.’ 1 The difficulties of day-to-day administration, many of them the necessary consequences of an active policy, seemed steadily to increase. We find Grey in 1848 still persevering with plans for colonizing North America, for reorganizing the transportation system, and for reforming the constitutions of Australia; he never loses faith in self-government, still less in free trade; but something of the initial elan has disappeared. By 1848, in short, Lord Grey was already beginning to lose his reputation as a Colonial Reformer.
