Radical or a Liberal, he desired that the electors should judge him according to the opinions he would express. He would bear allegiance to Sir George Grey, who, to his mind, “was the only statesman in New Zealand fit to lead.” The speech, read at the close of his life, affords proof of his consistency and steadiness of purpose. He never ceased to advocate what he advocated then; the same speech might be safely put into his mouth at almost any part of his career. Manhood suffrage, fair taxation, reform of the Legislative Council, a good system of local self-government, the settlement of the land, the policy of the large landowners, and the restriction of Chinese immigration were some of the headings he had written in the notes to which he referred as he went along. He described the manhood suffrage movement as striking terror into the hearts of the Conservatives. He naively referred to miners as the most intelligent class of constituents, and solemnly declared, amid the applause of his audience, that he would rather be judged by a mining constituency than by any other body of men. His midnight study of Blue Books helped him in his treatment of the financial position.
“I ask,” he said, “if this country is in a sound financial position? Six million pounds a year are required to carry on the government, and eight million pounds are imported from the Old Country. New South Wales, with a population of 650,000, owes £12,000.000; Victoria, with 860,000 people, owes £20,000,000; New Zealand, with only 440,000 people, owes £21,000,000; and the £5,000,000 about to be borrowed will make £26,000,000. The public debt amounts to £20 per head of population in New South Wales, to £23 in Victoria, and to no less than £62 10s. in New Zealand. I maintain that this colony has been pursuing an unsound policy. Something ought to be done to check the quantities of imported goods, and to foster local industries. With that object in view, it will be better for the people to pay a little more for a year or two. The sum of over £1,000,000 has been paid for locomotives that might have been made in the colony. Whatever our liabilities are, however, we, as good men and true, will have to meet them.”
He had a rough-and-ready, but characteristically practical, solution of the native difficulty, which was then a source of much anxiety:
