THE LATE MR. T. E. TAYLOR.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 31, 31 July 1911, Page 2

THE LATE MR. T. E. TAYLOR.

AN APPRECIATION. - AS OUTSIDERS SAW HIM. In an article in the New Voice in HW<5, | headed "Cruising in the South Pacific,* < Mr. Woolley paid a high tribute to Mr. T. E. Taylor. Summing up briefly his "Tmpression of the colony he had just left, its thought and work, its possibilities, its class legislation, its corrupt Government, and the outlook for tho future, Mr. Woolley concluded:— "This present unfortunate condition is certainly only temporary. New Zealand, as I have said, is a Christian country, and while the mad race for wealth and power has been going on, the pastors have worked faithfully, teaching the old ideals, biding their time. The school system has been rooting like strawberry vines from schoolhouse to schoolhouse; the' prohibition party has been forcing its issue and its high political 1 morality upon the public mind, woman suffrage often lying relatively dormant while the enfranchised mothers and wives got the hang of their sovereignty, has rolled like a spring tide over the situation, and bettor things are looming. "In the centre of these elemental forces for good stands the heroic figure oi a. Man—Tom Taylor, of Christchurch, the Savonarola of Now Zealand, a giant morally and intellectually, a child of the people, a genius and the'idol of the bestelement of the colony, an orator ol the first magnitude, a self-taught 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 Frances 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 the flash of his , flaming back eyes amPUie clarion note of his voice, and know that he is alive and making trouble. Certain it is that i when he rises in Parliament to speak, the Premier and his little Ministers shud- \ de.r. 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 Life and Times' of T. E. Taylor.'" I . ====== .