m long walks, and many hints from the United States constitution. I
sought a scheme of government which should be broad, free, charged with a
young nation's vitality. But the greatest merit of my constitution, was
that the people of New Zealand could alter it at any point, should they
desire to do so. That was why it appeared to me unnecessary to ask a
number of leading men: Did they approve what I was doing? I aimed at a
most liberal constitution, and they could change it to their wishes as
time went on.'

Sir George held man's highest education to be that, which taught him the
rights and duties of citizenship. No call could be more noble; indeed,
here was the essence of all service and religion. Therefore, he conceived
the best system of government, to be one wherein the opportunities for
the exercise of citizenship were the fullest. What could be more pathetic
than the cramping of aspirations, such as had been seen in the case of
Ireland? It was as if the roots of a tree were half destroyed, so
preventing the full flow of strength into the trunk.

Sir George Grey's New Zealand constitution was thus inspired. There was
in it the breath of the mountains; to which he had gone, as the great
law-giver of the Jews went up into them to pray. It proclaimed a minute
self-government, ending in a central Parliament. The powers in London
approved it, with a modification which, looking backward, he pronounced a
vital wound. He made both the Houses of Parliament elective; the
modification made one nominative. It spoiled the fabric of his handiwork.

'The kernel of my plan,' he said, 'was a form of complete home rule,
denominated in provinces. My idea was to give all the localities the
right to levy their own taxes, and establish their own immediate rules.
The great landowners were always antagonistic to this, believing that
these councils would tax them, when a single Parliament, by the influence
they might assert upon it, especially through a nominated Upper House,
would not do so. Such was the force which, twenty years later, led to the
destruction of the New Zealand Provincial Councils.'

The old war-horse was not neighing for the fray, that being all over; he
was just putting his footnote to a piece of history he had fashioned. It
suggested another. The Duke of Newcastle was concerned in the drawing up
of the Canadian constitution. He informed the author of the New Zealand
one, that he had been largely indebted to it. Mentio