OUR LORDS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIV, Issue 132, 4 June 1879, Page 2

OUR LORDS.

Under this heading the Canterbury Times has for some time past been giving brief sketches of the members of the Legislative Council. Tbe following refers to a gentleman well known in Nelson, where he has resided for the last thirty years: — The Hon Major Richmond, C.8., has been officially and politically, long identified with New Zealand. But there is in him nothing of the stuff which makes a stafcesuiau. He is a good easy man, without ambition and political aptitude, but earnest in doing his duty to the best of his ability, and in the early days of the colony he had duties of no pleasant character. Those who only know him as " the oldest inhabitant " of the serene Council Chamber, and in the calm Chairmanship of Committees, can have no idea of tbe troublous time which he went through as Superintendent of the Southern District of New Zealand from 1843]t0 1847. Called on to administer public affairs in Wellington and Nelson, acting under instructions from Auckland, received probably at intervals of three months, thwarted by the New Zealand Company, criticised by a censorious Press, watched ;by able men chafing at despotic government, surrounded with hostile natives, and without money and without soldiers] Major Richmond underwent an ordeal which the subsequent quiet of 30 years can hardly have effaced from his mind. In the midst of telegraphs and steamers, and with our responsibilities infinitely subdivided, we can scarcely form a conception of the mental anxiety and oppressive burden which the man in authority endures when he is without counsel and sympathy, and when a slight failure on his part to meet successive emergencies would probably result in the massacre of settlers, and even in the destruction of a settlement. As a member of the Council, Major Richmond seldom speaks, but his' views, as shown by his votes, are straightforward, and on the whole practical and sensible. As Chairman of Committees he has earned the respect and approbation of the whole Council. He has almost a prescriptive claim to the vacant Speakership; and we trust that the offer will be made to him. The work is not more onerous than that of Chairman of Committees; and the colony, we believe, would be glad to see a long life of honorable public service rewarded by dignified position.