It is probably unnecessary for me to write much concerning my late chief’s political achievements; Mr. Drummond in his excellent work tells in detail the story of Mr. Seddon’s legislative triumphs. It will be sufficient to remark that for twenty-seven years he sat in the Parliament of this country, returned again and again by his staunch West Coast friends, though any constituency in the colony would probably have returned him. For fifteen years he was a Minister of the Crown, and for thirteen years, as Premier, he practically ruled New Zealand. To chronicle the measures which he has been mainly instrumental in passing into law during those thirteen years would be to write our public history for that period. Humanitarianism was his political creed. “I believe,” he wrote in his famous manifesto issued just prior to the last general election, which resulted in such an overwhelming victory for the Liberal party, “that the cardinal aim of government is to provide the conditions which will reduce want, and permit the very largest possible number of its people to be healthy, happy human beings. The life, the health, the intelligence, and the morals of a nation count for more than riches, and I would rather have this country free from want and squalor and unemployed than the home of multi-millionaires.” This was the keynote of Mr. Seddon’s political life-work. It was a lofty and noble ideal. Long ago a philosopher laid down the axiom that “ideals can never be completely realised,” but Richard Seddon did his strenuous best, and the truly happy State which he had in his mind’s eye is more nearly approached in New Zealand than in any other country on the globe.
It was often said of the late Premier that with all his insight and keenness of judgment he was too impulsive, too apt to be led away by a wave of public opinion. But he had the true democratic conviction that it was his duty to give effect to what he believed to be the will of the people. Indeed, one of the great secrets of his success was that he possessed the gift, or knack, or whatever it may be called, of anticipating the trend of popular feeling; the happy gift of intuition. This was, particularly emphasized during the Boer War, when Mr. Seddon’s offer of New Zealand contingents for service in South Africa not
