ABSTRACT
THE task of devising a new colonial policy was eminently calculated to appeal to the new Whig Secretary of State for the Colonies, the third Earl Grey. 1 He had his defects: he lacked sympathy and the insight which comes of sympathy: he was cantankerous and dogmatic. But he was a man of strong and independent mind, capable of taking a long view and quick to grasp a principle, hard-working and public-spirited. Though an unsparing critic—and critical of himself as well as of others, for he was sincere and honest with himself—his criticism was never sterile: his aim was not to destroy but to reconstruct. By temperament authoritarian, he was yet, by conviction as well as by affiliation, a Reformer.
