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Temuka Leader, Issue 2530, 18 July 1893, Page 4

THE LATE SIR WILLIAM FOX. Sir William Fox, K.C.M.G., whose death at Auckland occurred recently, was a son of George Townsend Fox, J.P., and Deputy-Lieutenant for the County of Durham. He was born in 1812, and was educated at Oxford, where he took his B.A. in 1832 and M.A. in 1839. He studied for the Bar, and was “ called ” in 1842, but the same year emigrated to Wellington, and thus he was one of the earliest settlers. He left Home with the intention of following the vocation of private colonists but in 1843 he accepted the post of Resident Agent of the Hew Zealand Company, at Nelson, in succession to Captain Wakefield. He held this post till 1848, when he was appointed Attorney-General for the Southern Province. He only accepted this positon on condition that self-govern-ment was immediately to be bestowed on the colony, and as that condition was not fulfilled he resigned. (Shortly afterwards he became principal agent of the New Zealand Company, with charge of all the settlements from the south to New Plymouth. He visited the principal ports and settlements, did some exploration, and in 1851 published an account of the six colonies in New Zealand as they then existed. In 1853 he was elected to the first New Zealand Parliament, and in 1856 formed his first administration, which however, was short-lived. In 1861, as leader of the Opposition, he deteated Mr Stafford on Native questions, and formed a Philo-Maori Ministry, which held office for a year. He was Premier again from ’63 to ’64, ’69 to ’72, and was a colleague of Sir Julius Vogel in 1870, when the Public Works scheme was put and carried. In 1880 he did important work in settling the ownership of native lauds on the west coast of the North Island, a settlement which has proved satisfactory to all parties . Mr Fox added to the records of the earlier days a work on “The War in New Zealand, ” which not only gives a full account of the war, but of the causes which led to it. Of late years Sir Wm. Fox has been best known as an ardent temperance reformer. (The above particulars are from Cox’s Men of Mark of New Zealand.)