ABSTRACT
The complexity of the constitution was to be reduced by a kind of licensed Pooh-Bahism. There were to. be only two provinces at first, though the colonists were threatened with more hereafter. Captain Grey was to be Governor of each province as well as Governor-in-Chief of New Zealand, and E. J. Eyre, the Australian explorer, was appointed LieutenantGovernor to conduct the government of the province in which Grey was not for the time residing. When Grey
appointed the leading officials of the General Government to hold the chief provincial offices in the north he was acting quite in accordance with the spirit of the Charter and Instructions. The provisions for indirect election were designed to minimize frictiori, and doubtless it was realized that a simple settler might well be at the same time a common councillor-or an alderman, if he had expensive tastesa provincial representative and a member of the General Assembly. Yet one cannot refrain from a feeling of amazement that Lord Grey should claim that the constitution was as like the English model as circumstances would allow; that ~he ~imes should commend the 'laudable anxiety of Earl Grey to profit by the suggestions of practical knowledge and the wisdom of experience';1 that Stephen should have set about his drafting in the belief that Captain Grey's views in general coincided with his own.2 It might be demonstrably the most logical constitution to give New Zealand, but the pioneer settler was not likely to stop and listen to the logic.3 He was certainly not that kind of political animal. Nor was a General Assembly elected in three stages an institution likely to encourage the growth of a real national feeling. Yet, as will be seen, these were not the worst mistakes of the constitution: it ignored a still more fundamental fact.
