EARLY PREMIERS

Evening Star, Issue 23678, 11 September 1940, Page 3

EARLY PREMIERS

MEN OF NOTE IN NATION'S HISTORY ADDRESS BY HON. DOWNIE STEWART An interesting address on the lives of some of the early Now Zealand Prime Ministers was delivered by the Hon. W. Downie Stewart to a meeting of the Otago branch of the Royal Society of Now Zealand last night. Mr Stewart remarked that if they wished to lind some distraction for their minds from the tragic conflict that was at present, menacing their whole civilisation they coidd either look forward to the future and dream of a new world order, or they could turn back to ptist day.-, and find consolation in the records oi history. •So competent an historian as William Gisborne had declared that no statesmen in any country had to face and solve problems of greater magnitude and complexity than those which fell to be dealt with by the political leaders in the first and second decades of New Zealand’s constitutional his-tory-say, from 1850 to 1870. The many problems might well have tested the "capacity of the statesmen of the old world, and one of the most fortunate features of their history was that they had men of great ability and of the highest character and of wide human sympathies to cope with these far-reaching and intricate problems. He was, said the speaker, referring to such men as J. E. Fitz Gerald, Sir ltdward Stafford, Sir Frederick Weld, and Alfred Domett, who were all Prime Ministers in the first period. A brief outline was given of J. E. Fitz Gerald’s remarkable, career. In one memorable speech in the House Fitz Gerald had said that he ventured to predict that among the traditions of the great nation which would one day rule these islands, and the foundation of which we are now laying, the most cherished and the most honoured would bo the wise, bold, and generous policy, which had given the Magna Charta of their liberties to the Maori race.

The speaker related other facts in the public career of Fitz Gerald, and said that if the tributes paid to him after his death were in any degree accurate he must have possessed an astonishing personality. Sir Edward William Stafford did not immediately succeed the hybrid Ministry of Fitz Gerald, but he was the first to form a stable Government. That was in 1856, continued the speaker. The two previous Governments, known as the Bell Sewell Government and the Fox Government, had only lasted for brief periods. The political career of Sir Edward was traced, and when he became Prime Minister in 1856 he had proved his outstanding ability, botb Gisborne and Saunders declaring that he was the ablest leader of a party New Zealand had ever had. Mr Stewart then referred to Sir Frederick Weld, the author of the selfreliant policy, who, ho said, was perhaps even a more remarkable man than the others. He was a man with a great vision and a high and. noble outlook. He had left New Zealand and had held high Government office in West Australia, Tasmania, and then the Straits Settlement. These three men, concluded the speaker, by no means exhausted the list of that admirable typo of statesman which he had sought to portray. There were Others, like Dillon Bell and Domett.