RICHARD J. SEDDON.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3721, 25 October 1906, Page 3

RICHARD J. SEDDON.

l&y Harold Anson in “ The Commonwealth” magazine.] Seldom has anyone in our days so well merited the title of King as .King Richard of New Zealand. He was the very incarnation of the Spirit of the Colonial working man, and the working man loved him as the living image 01 all that he would himself like to be—not perhaps when he was quite at his best, not as he would have wished to be in his most serious moments —but as the image of his everyday dreams and aspirations. An immense man in every sense; huge in size, enormously stout and heavy with great deep piercing eyes which could beat down by sheer force many statesmen with a greater reputation than his own, a trumpet voice, an iron will, a large contempt for theories and scruples—all went to make up the great, jovial, generous, tyrannical old giant who made New Zealand the paradise of the working man. Seddon used to say with characteristic self complacency that he inherited all the caution of the Scots from his mother and all the generosity of the Englishman from his father.

As a boy he drove a butcher’s cart near Dumfries; later on he was a working man in Lancashire ; then we find him an engineer in Victoria, then’the host of a rough mining “pub ” in Westland on the gold diggings of New Zealand. He owed his. political advancement largely to Sir George Grey, who soon saw the talent which lay in that rough frame; from him many New Zealanders think he learnt a singular unscrupulousness in the ordinary dealings of political life which cannot truthfully be hidden in any estimate of his influence upon New Zealand life. Let us get over at once the worst that has to be said of Seddon ; he found the Newsealand Parliament and Government in the hands of landlords and gentlemen of an exceedingly high level of intelligence and moral rectitude; a model of allSfeat a Parliament and Government ought to be in regard to high principle and the sense of public duty ; he has left it on a level with the average American State legislature; with most of the evils, which we associate with American politics rampant and unabashed. This is n6t pleasant to say, and we should like to forget it. But if we cannot acquit Seddon of some share in the methods of Tammany which all the best New Zealanders are deploring to-day, we must also remember that it is very doubtful whether a man of very.scrupulous conscience and refined feelings could ever so much as,. have got himself elected, much less have carried througlrthe immense social revolution which,'Seddon has led and controlled. The gentje spirited scholars of the honourable public school bred run holders who so largely moulded the colony a generation ago would never have had a chance in the triumphant march of Labour, they could not stem it, they could never have led it.. No race of men is more honourable than the run holders who were Seddon's bitterest enemies; but they had no sympathy with the reforms which all classes in New Zealand are now proud of, and which Seddon with all his faults carried through, and which his finer spirited opponents abhorred. It is a noble record to have provided lands and homes for thousands of poor families, to

' have saved them from the grip of the money lender, and lent them money to makeffheir homes their own, to have given all indigent old men and women pensions sufficient for them to live in simple comfort, to have kept out foreign pauper labour which threatened to lower the whole standard of decency and order in the interest of foreign syndicates—to ha\e given good education to children from the common school to the University, _ to have crushed the combines which • threatened to enslave the colonists to the foreign capitalist—it is a noble achievement, and we cannot wonder that, evert if the weapons ofSeddon’s warfare were exceedingly carnal, the men and women of New Zealand are proud of their King Dick. - , We can see him arriving on a political tour at some small provincial town; the Royal Saloon draws up to the platform, the crowds which frequent every station at the arrival of every train cheer and call out ‘ ‘ Good old Dick,” the portentous form appears on the saloon platform, with a kindly smile, and he is soon shaking hands with all the roughest folk around. Then up comes the most disreputable inhabitant of the town “ Don’t yon remember me, Dick, on the diggings?” “That I do,” says King Dick; “come along, old man, an’ ’ave a drink,” and the Premier disappears behind the bar of the Station Hotel with his rough old “pal” amid the frantic applause of the people. Then he would see endless deputations on every kind of public and private business, promise, or seem to promise the most contradictory things to each and every deputation, send off sheaves of telegrams on business, public or private, important or trivial (the telegrams of birthday greetings to an old friend were sometimes ot ’portentous length), then address a huge public meeting, rally the people if they returned an opposition member on their bad bridges and roads and Post Offices, and" tell them very openly and with much good humour that they knew the way of gettingbetter attended to in these matters by mending their'representation, and then early the next morning off to do the same thing somewhere else;, never tired, always jovial and vigorous, and despotic, an untiring foe to class privilege, an unswerving friend of the poor and oppressed. The creed of the Imperialist was dear to the heart of Seddon. It is said that not so many years ago a political candidate in a small New Zealand town trampled on the Union Jack and raised loud cheers, blow every'New Zealand child* salutes. the Union Jack in the School grounds and knows what it means. This is Seddon’s work. He believed profoundly iu the political solidity of the English race, and he believed too, in Protection and Preferential-Tariff as a means of consplidatijig’.the' Empire and' keeping out'pauper labour. He believed that Trades Union wages and a decent standard of moral life depended upon a tariff which should keep out cheap foreign goods. Roosevelt’s frase, “to keep out all labour which is not prepared to adopt the American standard of living,’’ expresses exactly Seddon’s attitude towards Fiscal Reform and in this he had the hearty support of the Labour Party. Towards the Maoris lie was always generous and fatherly, and they loved him for this, and not less on account of his gigantic size and weight, which so powerfully impresses the savage mind. Seddon was a Churchman, of the type that goes to Church at 11, but he was not a keen Churchman. Anglicans were generally speaking bis political foes, and sometimes he felt he was not welcomed in Anglican, social life. He liked the temper and methods both of the" Roman Catholics and of the Salvation Army infinitely better, and from the former of these he got unfailing political support. His family life was always a model of all that one would hope to be the ideal of English home—and it is difficult to over estimate the value of this among the working men of the colony ; he always spoke reverently of religion, and whereas, when he came to power the Labour leaders were actively hostile to Christianity, they now in New Zealand believe at least in the spirit of Christian ideals ; he was a friend and a hard working friend, to every effort to raise ,the fallen, to help orphans or prisoners. We must hope that the newer generation in New Zealand will require a stricter standard in political life than the last generation asked for or would have aci cepted, and Seddon belonged to j the rougher days of the new i Colony, but that Colony will 1 never forget what the rough, generous labour king did for it in the rough old days, and we in England who look enviously at what

has been done in New Zealand for labouring men will always have a Warm corner in our hearts for the old King, who, like Jehu, fought .-Jehovah’s battles with very rough weapons, but with a very brave zeal for the majesty of Jehovah’s cause.