THE OBSERVER CARTOON.

Observer, Volume 4, Issue 91, 10 June 1882, Page 196

THE OBSERVER CARTOON.

No. 22 : —Sir William Fox

Sib Willia-M Fox is one of the foremost of our Colonial men. lie has had no inconsiderable share in the making oi ; our history ; he will leave lii 3 name aud acts indelibly marked on its pages. He stood by the cradle of the Colony, -watched over the first growth of its institutions, nursed it in its adolescence, and though, now that it has become 'vigorous, with- a promising manhood, lie lias retired from active supervision over its career, he still retains a fatherly interest in its welfare and prosperity. For many years he and Stafford alternately stood in the foreground of New Zealand politics, i*egulated the ebb and floy of the political tide, and shaped the destinies of the Colony. Now that a new generation has sprung up, and the old things have passed away, Sir William Fox, at a ripe age, still hale and vigorous of intellect, though with less of the Jive and incisiveness of his best days, has -gracefully given place to younger men. With the solid experience of forty years of Colonial struggles, full of honours, he can look from the loop-holes of retirement backwards on an eventful past, and forward upon an assured future for the Colony, ■whose best interests, in spite of that inevitable detraction — from, which no public man can hope ( to escape — he lias always had at heart. To say that he has made mistakes and enemies "is to say that he is human, but he has. been single-minded, and unselfish, embueel with a large share of those patriotic instincts which actuated his early contemporaries who have passed from the sphere of human strife and turmoil, leaving him almost alone. He has many friends. To his loyalty to them, as woll as his remembrance of old political feuds, may be traced those broadly marked lines in his character that his enemies call narrowness of mind, inipraeticableness, or obstinacy. Professedly a Liberal, he is in truth a Conservative, not from - principle, but from interest and sympathy' with his old allies who have waxed rich ax\d amassed property by good luck, and the " unearned ■ increment." Of late years his interest m politics has been overshadowed by hits advocacy of total abstinence. It is his hobby. Thorough in all. heroes, he throws his whole scitiLinto the cause. He sees almost every phase and condition, of life, through temperance spectacles. To be a teetotaller is in his eyes to possess the snmmum bennni of all the virtties ; to be anything else, to be unreliable, or wicked. Inis to him the incarnation of all evil, it^s|Turce of eveiy ill. But even here he is cou-~ sßealioiits, able, always instructive, sometimes amusing. He is the Sir Wilfred Lawaon of New Zealand. : ;