GREY, SIR GEORGE (1812-1898), British colonial gov ernor and statesman, only son of Lieutenant-Colonel Grey of the 3oth Foot, was born in Lisbon on April 14, 1812, eight days after the death of his father at the storming of Badajoz. He passed through Sandhurst with credit, and received his commission in 1829. His lieutenancy was dated 1833, and his captaincy 1839, in which year he sold out and left the army. In 1836 the Royal Ge ographical Society accepted his offer to explore the north-west region of West Australia, and accordingly he landed at Hanover Bay at the end of 1837. The surrounding country he found broken and difficult, and his hardships were aggravated by the tropical heat and his ignorance of the continent. In a skirmish with the natives, in which he was speared near the hip, he showed great courage, and put the assailants to flight, shooting the chief, who had wounded him. After a brave endeavour to continue his journey his wound forced him to retreat to the coast, whence he sailed to Mauritius to recruit. Next year he again essayed ex ploration, this time on the coast to the north and south of Shark's Bay. He had three whale-boats and an ample supply of provisions, but by a series of disasters his stores were spoilt by storms, his boats wrecked in the surf, and the party had to tramp on foot from Gantheaume Bay to Perth, where Grey, in the end, walked in alone, so changed by suffering that friends did not know him. In 1839 he was appointed governor-resident at Albany, and during his stay there married Eliza, daughter of Admiral Spencer, and also prepared for publication an account, in two volumes, of his expeditions.
In 184o he returned to England, to be immediately appointed by Lord John Russell to succeed Colonel Gawler as governor of South Australia. Reaching the colony in May 1841, he found it in the depths of a depression caused by mismanagement and in sane land speculation. By rigorously reducing public expenditure, and forcing the settlers to quit the town and betake themselves to tilling their lands, and with the opportune help of valuable copper discoveries, Grey helped the infant colony to emerge from the slough. In 1845, when the little settlements in New Zealand were involved in a native war, he was sent to save them. The Maori chiefs made their submission. The governor gained the veneration of the Maori tribes, in whose welfare he took a close personal interest, and of whose legends and myths he made a valuable and scholarly collection, published in New Zealand in 1855 and re printed thirty years afterwards. Grey presently became involved in harassing disputes with the colonists, who organized an active agitation for autonomy. In the end a constitution, partly framed by Grey himself, was granted them, and Grey, of ter eight years of despotic but successful rule, was transferred to Cape Colony.
In South Africa Grey thwarted a formidable Kaffir rebellion in the Eastern Provinces, and pushed on the work of settlement by bringing out men from the German Legion and providing them with homes. He gained the respect of the British, the confidence of the Boers, the admiration and the trust of the natives. The Dutch of the Free State and the Basuto chose him as arbitrator of their quarrels. When the news of the Indian Mutiny reached Cape Town he strained every nerve to help Lord Canning, despatching men, horses, stores and f 6o,000 in specie to Bombay. He per suaded a detachment, then on its way round the Cape as a rein forcement for Lord Elgin in China, to divert its voyage to Cal cutta. Finally, in 1859, Grey almost reached what would have been the culminating point of his career by federating South Africa. Persuaded by him, the Orange Free State passed resolu tions in favour of this great step, and their action was welcomed by Cape Town. But the colonial office disapproved of the change, and when Grey attempted to persevere with it Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton recalled him. A change of ministry during his voyage to England displaced Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. But though the duke of Newcastle reinstated Grey, it was with instructions to let federation drop.
In 1861 the colonial office sent him as governor to New Zealand, where an inglorious native war in Taranaki had just been suc ceeded by an armed truce. Grey did his best to avert war, but it came in 1863, and spread from province to province. Ten thousand regulars and as many colonial riflemen were employed to put it down. The imperial troops were badly handled, and Grey, losing patience, became involved in bitter disputes with their commanders. As an example to the former he himself attacked and captured Weraroa, the strongest of the Maori stockades, with a handful of militia, a feat which delighted the colonists, but made him as much disliked at the war office as he now was at Downing Street. Moreover, Grey had no longer real control over the islands. New Zealand had become a self-governing colony, and though he vindicated the colonists generally when libelous imputations of cruelty and land-grabbing were freely made against them in London, he crossed swords with his ministers when the latter confiscated three million acres of tribal land belonging to the insurgent Maori. Yet a condition of something like tran quillity had been reached in 1867, when he received a curt inti mation from the duke of Buckingham that he was about to be superseded. The colonists bade farewell to him in 1868 in an out burst of gratitude and sympathy; but his career as a colonial governor was at an end. Returning to England, he delivered many able speeches advocating what later came to be termed Imperial ism, and stood for Newark.
Discouraged, however, by the official Liberals, he withdrew and turned again to New Zealand. In 1872 he was given a pension of f I,000 a year, and settled down on the island of Kawau, not far from Auckland, which he bought, and where he passed his leisure in planting, gardening and collecting books. In 1875, on the invitation of the Auckland settlers, he became superintendent of their province, and entered the New Zealand House of Repre sentatives. He became premier of New Zealand in 1877. Man hood suffrage, triennial parliaments, a land-tax, the purchase of large estates and the popular election of the governor, were lead ing points of his policy. All these reforms, except the last, he lived to see carried ; none of them were passed by him. For the fifteen years after the fall of his ministry in 1879 he remained a solitary and pathetic figure in the New Zealand parliament, respectfully treated, courteously listened to, but never again invited to lead. In 1894, he left New Zealand, and made his home in London, where he died on Sept. 20, 1898.
Lives of Sir George Grey have been written by W. L. and L. Rees (1892), Professor G. C. Henderson (1907) and J. Collier (19o9).
(W. P. RE. ; X.)