Page:History of Adelaide and vicinity.djvu/125

 The Husbandmen ADELAIDE AND VICINITY 99 centres. Indirectly, the settlement of farmers around Kapunda, Penwortham, Clare, and in districts further south, was materially promoted. On October 25, 1845, Governor Grey relinquished his position. For the first two or three years of his administration his actions created strong opposition ; and yet, when it became known that he was leaving South Australia, the heartiness of popular regret was undoubted, it being generally recognised that he had done much good for the Province. " He had lived down incessant, flagrant, and altogether unmerited abuse and opposition," sums up Hodder, "conscious that he was in the right and that his motives were pure; he had proceeded from first to last in a straight line of policy, with judgment, decision, and firmness, and his reward was in the fact that he had saved the Colony from a chaotic state, and placed it on a sound and solid basis, and had proved himself one of the foremost political and financial reformers of the day." In June he introduced to the Legislative Council a Bill to repeal the pilotage, tonnage, wharfage, and other port and harbor dues and charges, an action that "created great surprise," and "gave unqualified satisfac- tion." Laudatory public meetings were held, and Governor Grey might have blushed at the compliments paid him during the next month or two. The members of the Legislative Council were convinced that " the urbanity of his manner to them, and the courteous attention he had given to their opinions and suggestions, had conduced to that perfect freedom of discussion which was necessary to the efiiciency of the Council as a legislative body, and so essential to its obtaining the confidence of the whole community." Addresses hurried in upon him, and the " voice of the whole people was heard in lamentation for their loss, and prai.se for the leader they had so litde appreciated." South Australian and English newspapers complimented him. Sir Robert Peel and others praised him in Parliament, and Lord John Russell declared that he had solved a problem as "difficult" in "colonial administration as could be committed to any man." Captain Grey left South Australia in the ship Elphinstone on Sunday, October 26, and proceeded to New Zealand to assume control there at an exceedingly awkward crisis. His vigorous and judicious action in suppressing a Maori rising ; his distinguished H2 -^^ij^^' •^^'
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The Burra in i8