The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, July 29, 1911. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 1023, 29 July 1911, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, July 29, 1911. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

The passing of T. E- Taylor M.P., and Mayor of Christchurch, has created a profound sensation throughout the Dominion and sorrow at his untimely end is universal. New Zealand can illafford to lose such a courageous public man. The character of the man is stamped in his dying words ; “I have made many mistakes, but I have tried to live an unselfish life for the good of the many. I have had a happy life and it has been full from beginning to end. I am very tired. I know I shall be happier where I am going, but I am glad to think that I have lived out every moment and that I have tried to do always what was right.” He loved the right and he hated wrong. He had no time for the “shirker” and “pointer” in high places. He gave himself willingly to any cause which had for its object the betterment of his fellows. Here is a tribute to the man published by Mr Woolley in the New Voice 1906, just after that distinguished orator’s return to the United States; —“ln the centre of these elemental forces for good stands the heroic

figure of a man —Tom Taylor, of Chrislchurch, the Savonarola of New Zealand, a giant morally and intellectually, a child of the people, a genius and the idol of the best element of the colony, an orator of the first magnitude, a selftaught scholar, a man of affairs, and masterly business ability and habits, as keen as James G. Blaine, as brave as John P. St. John, and as fine as Francis Willard ; deficient, some say, in tact for leadership, but in the midst of a regime of foxy plots and demagogy, it is like a breath of mountain air to catch tbe flash of his flaming black eyes and the clarion note of his voice, and know that he is alive and making trouble. Certain it is that when he rises in Parliament to speak, the Premier and his little Ministers shudder. Where he walks vice cowers and licensed infamy howls. The first twenty years of the twentieth century will mean for New Zealand her moral emancipation in politics, and when the history of it is written, it will be named ‘The Fife and Times of T. E. Taylor.” A friend speaking of his home life says; “ As the head of a family, it would be difficult to conjure up a more delightful picture than could be seen at any time in his own home, where he was surrounded by his handsome and delightful wife and bevy of clever and happy children, five girls and one boy. No man enjoyed more the joys of domesticity or was happier in the bosom of his family ; and yet he sacrificed the pleasures, the consolations, and the satisfaction of it all many a time when he believed he could accomplish something beneficial for the human family at large by giving to its service without stint a portion of the great ability so large a part of his nature.” Labour has lost an able champion and the Prohibition party one of its greatest leaders. His last messages to these two great factors should inspire a greater enthusiasm, The greatest monument the No-License party could erect to the memory of Mr T. E. Taylor would be the emancipation of the Dominion from the liquor traffic at the coming polls.