inence, not for sheer merit, but because they happened to be born
to rank. How did Napoleon Bonaparte make his army? By opening the very
highest places to whoever could best fill them.'

Governor or no Governor, Sir George Grey must still work for his ideas
and ideals, and after a little he hied him to England. Thinking, perhaps,
that it had been abrupt with him, Downing Street was affable and kindly.
But he was never, no matter how British Governments came or went, to be
more employed. South Africa yearned for a strong pilot, and he was ready
to step aboard. 'I even asked,' he said, 'to be sent back there, the one
occasion on which I ever asked for anything, but without result.'

Disraeli offered to find him a seat in Parliament, perhaps as a sort of
balm for wounded feelings. 'I put that meaning on the offer,' Sir George
remarked, 'and really it was very good-natured on Disraeli's part. It was
so, all the more, when I remembered our contest over the affair of the
Kaffir chiefs and their allowance. You see, I rather had the best of
that, and his friends chaffed him about it.' Sir George was his own
political party all through life, so far as he was a politician at all.
Disraeli asked no pledges, but, as Sir George observed, 'We were far
divided in our views, and I should have been in revolt almost before I
had taken my seat. Therefore I declined with thanks.'

Meanwhile, being free of official shackles, he hurled himself against the
movement, rampant in England, to throw off the Colonies. He was Pro-
Consul at large, under warrant of a duty for which he held himself
accountable to the English-speaking people. He doubted whether he was
not, thus, doing even better work, than he would have found to his hand
as an employed Governor. There rang from end to end of the country a
shriek of dismemberment: 'Cut the painter, chop off the Colonies, they
are a burden to us; we should confine ourselves to ourselves!'

'It is difficult,' said Sir George, 'to make anybody, who was not in that
struggle, understand it. One would have called it simply freakish, if the
possible outcome had been less grave. It was a strange fit to seize upon
the country, and unfortunately it expressed the view of nearly all the
leading statesmen. Cut the painter! You cannot imagine any sensible
person of these later, and regenerate, days having such an idea. Throw
away Australasia or South Africa! You have heard my retort on such a
demand. Who had the r