GRAY, MOSES WILSON (1813-75) was born at Claremorris, county Mayo, Ireland, the son of John Gray and younger brother of Sir John Gray, sometime M.P. for Kilkenny and founder of the Freeman's Journal. His ancestors were Ulster Orangemen who moved to Connaught in the interests of Protestant ascendancy. He was educated at Cork and afterwards at Hazlewood, near Birmingham, under the father of Sir Rowland Hill. He then proceeded to Trinity College, Dublin (1829) where amongst distinguished contemporaries such as Mr Justice Willes, Dillon, Davis, Sir Edmund Barry, Isaac Butt and Dr Kenealy, he graduated B.A. (1835) and took honours and a scholarship. He entered at King's Inns 1834, and was called in 1845.

In 1835 Gray was appointed an assistant commissioner in the Poor Law Inquiry in Ireland, and in that duty he gained much experience in emigration. When the post terminated he went to the United States and was called to the bar. He was greatly interested in the settlement of the new frontier states, and after his return to Ireland he wrote a valuable pamphlet (1848) propounding a scheme for the relief of poverty in Ireland through the establishment of colonies in America by Irish landed proprietors. Gray came back from America in the middle of 1843 with promises of money and political support for Ireland. He took part in the management of the Freeman's Journal, of which he was for some time editor. In 1844 his brother James was convicted of treason (with the O'Connells), but the conviction was afterwards quashed.

Wilson Gray continued to read for the bar and was called as stated, but was temperamentally too timid for successful pleading. The brothers were leading figures at the conference of tenants in Dublin in 1850 to frame better land legislation, and the League of the North and South suffered a severe blow when, fearing excesses by the peasantry in the parishes, they withdrew their fund of political sagacity from the council. In 1856 Gray sold his interest in the Freeman and, with Charles Gavan Duffy, he went to Victoria. (According to the Victorian Law list, Gray was admitted there on 24 Dec 1851, being the third barrister on the roll.) Duffy was lionised, while Gray quietly haunted the courts, too diffident to make his way to a lucrative practice. For two years he reported the law courts for the Argus. He became interested in the eight-hour movement and the land question, and in 1858 was a prime mover in, and president of, the Victorian convention, which sat for some years at Melbourne, in a hotel opposite the House of Parliament. A demonstration organised by Gray led to the passing of a bill making it illegal to hold assemblies within 200 yards of the house of Parliament. The opposition organised against the land bill was successful.

Gray was defeated for the East Melbourne seat in Parliament in 1859, but in 1860 became member of the House of Assembly for Rodney. He was the forerunner of radical thought in Victoria and a notable opponent of the squatter interest. He declined Duffy's offer of the solicitor-generalship in 1857, and often voted against his colleagues. Though re-elected in 1862, he resigned his seat in the following year and moved to Dunedin, where he was admitted as a barrister of the Supreme Court. Gray never shone at the bar. He had a profound knowledge of legal principles and afterwards became an authority on the mining law of New Zealand, but he shunned the hurlyburly of the courts and modestly devilled for his friend G. E. Barton. He is said to have declined the dual office of provincial solicitor and crown prosecutor, but in Jun 1864 was appointed judge of the district court and resident magistrate on the goldfields. His decisions were consistently sound and were reprinted in the New Zealand Jurist as Gray's District Court Mining Decisions. Painstaking and conscientious to a degree, spartan in dress, he endured much hardship in arduous travelling. Nevertheless he declined a county court judgeship in Victoria and a puisne judgeship in New Zealand (1868) and wore out his frail health in the conscientious discharge of his role on the goldfields. Provision was made for a pension in 1875, but he did not live to enjoy the retirement. His death (at Lawrence on 4 Apr 1875) terminated what the Otago Daily Times described as "a blameless life [which was] one religious act of noble generosity." Gray was survived by his wife and a son, Wilson H. Gray, who had distinguished himself in the Federal army during the civil war in the United States.

Ross: Mennell: Kings Inns Library, Dublin; Burtchaell and Sadleir, Alumni Dublinenses; Otago Daily Times, 5, 12 Apr 1875; N.Z. Colonial Law Journ., pt 1; R. Stout, in Melbourne Review, vol vii, 1882, p 27-40. Portrait, by John Irvine, A.R.S.A., in Otago University.

Reference: Volume 1, page 176

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