NEW ZEALAND’S PIONEERS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1796, 2 March 1918, Page 3

NEW ZEALAND’S PIONEERS.

Sir Robert Stout, in the course of an address at Palmerston on,Thursday evening, referred to the passing of New Zealand’s pioneers. “This came home to me,” said Sir Robert Stout, “when I looked over the list of members of Parliament of 1875. That is only 43 years ago. There were then 44 members in the Legislative Council and 80 members in the House of Representative^—l 24 in all. How many, think you, of that list are alive to-day? There are only three, and they are the Hon, Colonel Baillie, Mr Donald Reed, and myself. Alas! the scythe l of the ever-present conqueror has -laid many low.” Continuing, the speaker said the pioneers had done much. He could not go as far back in our history as many, but he could speak from the personal experience of 54 years of life in the Dominion. What an advance there had been! Our Government had been democratised, education promoted, and the amenities of civilised life wonderfully increased. When he first remembered New Zealand it had few and poor roads and hardly any bridges. There was not a single* large bridge in New Zealand, and no railways, telegraphs, gasworks, trams, electric lighting, little drainage, no city with waterworks or drainage systems, no public libraries, few newspapers, cultivation was meagre, and cities were small and buildings poor. Now we had all the luxuries of life, as though New Zealand were an old community.