Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Seddon, Richard John
SEDDON, RICHARD JOHN (1845–1906), premier of New Zealand, born at Eccleston Hill, St. Helens, Lancashire, on 22 June 1845, was second child in the family of four sons and three daughters of Thomas Seddon, headmaster of Eccleston Hill grammar school, by his wife Jane Lindsay of Annan, Dumfriesshire, headmistress of the denominational school in the same place. The father afterwards became an official of the board of guardians at Prescott, and later a greengrocer in the Liverpool Road, St. Helens. After attendance at his father's school, where he proved refractory and showed no aptitude for anything save mechanical drawing, he was sent at twelve to his grandfather at Barrownook Farm, Bickerstaffe, and then at fourteen was apprenticed to the firm of Daglish & Co., engineers and ironfounders, of St. Helens. After five years at St. Helens he entered the Vauxhall Iron Foundry at Liverpool, and obtained his board of trade engineer's certificate. Dissatisfied with his prospects in England he worked his way out to Victoria in the Star of England in 1863, and made for the goldfields of Bendigo. There his efforts were unsuccessful. From 1864 he was employed as a journeyman fitter in the railway workshops of the Victoria government at Williamstown. But in 1866 he was persuaded by an uncle, who had settled on the west coast of New Zealand, to try his luck anew at the old Six Mile diggings at Waimea. He joined several mates in washing a claim on the Waimea Creek without result. His knowledge of engineering however proved useful, and through his uncle's influence he did some work for the Band of Hope water race. He pressed for the construction of water races to bring water from higher levels to sluice the claims, and zealously pushed the miners' interests against sluggish or hostile authorities. Abandoning the diggings, he : soon opened a store at Big Dam, and it prospered. In 1869 he was made chairman of the Arahura road board, where he showed himself a strong administrator. He unsuccessfully contested a seat for the Westland county council ; but the affairs of his road board brought him to Stafford ; town, where he became a member of the school committee.
In 1874 Seddon moved his store to the new goldfields at Kimiara, and there he at once played a prominent part in local affairs. At his persuasion the goldfields warden laid the place out as a township under the Mining Act ; the citizens named one of their streets after him and elected him the first mayor. A member of the board of education, he supported the secular against the denominational system. As member for Arahura on the Westland provincial ; council, he was appointed chairman of committees. From 1876, when Westland became a county, he was chairman of the county council until 1891. From 1869 Seddon combined management of his store with practice as miners' advocate in the goldfields warden's court, for which his fighting instincts, cheery, voluble power of speech, and legal ability well fitted him. His public influence grew steadily. Although in 1876 he failed to win the parliamentary constituency of Hokitika as a supporter of Sir George Grey, he was in 1879 returned as second member. In 1881 he was elected for Kumara (which was renamed Westland in 1890). That constituency he represented till death.
When Seddon entered parliament the conservative party was in power on sufferance under Sir John Hall [q. v. Suppl. II]. The liberal opposition was split into two sections, the smaller of which followed the late prime minister, Sir George Grey, and the larger was without a leader. Seddon joined the latter section, known as the Young New Zealand reform party. The conservative government could retain office only by introducing liberal bills. Seddon carefully studied parliamentary procedure, and his readiness of speech enabled him to practise obstruction on a formidable scale. From 1884, when a liberal government was formed under Sir Robert Stout, Seddon introduced many private bills which he succeeded in passing at a later period. The most important of these were his bill for licensing auctioneers and regulating sales and one to abolish the gold duty, a tax which pressed heavily on the miners, whose interests he always furthered. In 1888, during the period of economic disturbance and labour unrest which attended Atkinson's conservative administration (1889-90), Seddon with his liberal colleagues accepted John Ballance [q. v. Suppl. I] as their party's leader, and a policy of social reform was adopted. In 1890 Seddon succeeded in reducing the audit office vote. la the course of the same year he spoke in support of the great shipping strike, and advocated principles of state ownership and state interference, urging the government to end the strike by taking over the steamships. At the general election in December 1890 the liberal party secured a large majority, and in January 1891 Seddon joined Ballance's cabinet as minister for mines, public works, and defence.
In office Seddon at once distinguished himself. He stopped the sub-letting of government contracts, and introduced a system of letting government work in small sections to co-operative parties of workmen, a system which proved successful and was adopted in other colonies. In the country he strengthened his position by constant speaking in different places.
The ministry meanwhile was busy with land legislation of great importance and with its programme of social reform. Economic conditions were improving, and general confidence in the government was strong. On 6 Sept. 1891 Ballance fell ill, and owing to Seddon's mastery of parliamentary procedure he became acting premier in the premier's brief absence. On 3 June 1892 he became minister for marine, and on 1 May 1893, on Ballance's death, he became premier, retaining at the same time the portfolios of public works, mines, and defence. On 6 Sept. he exchanged the department of mines for that of native affairs. Pledged to carry out his predecessor's policy, he accepted and carried the measure for conferring the parliamentary vote on women, although he personally disapproved of women's entry into the political sphere (19 Sept.). Other important acts passed by his government during this year were one simplifying and consolidating the criminal code, and another creating a form of local option to control the liquor traffic. At the general election of November 1893 Seddon's party was returned with a majority of thirty-four in a house which contained seventy white members.
In 1894 Seddon prevented a financial crisis by bringing government aid to the Bank of New Zealand, with which the government dealt, when the bank was on the point of failure. During this and the next two years Seddon and his colleagues carried an immense amount of progressive legislation, including a bill in 1896 to allow local authorities to levy their rates on the unimproved value of the land. The country was prosperous, and Seddon's personal popularity increased.
Although at the general election of 1896 the government's majority fell to twelve, Seddon's influence was imimpaired. All departments of government were more or less under his control. He gave up his posts as minister of public works and defence early in 1896, but he had become minister for labour on 11 Jan. 1896. Till his death he retained that office with the premiership, the colonial treasurership, on which he first entered on 16 June 1896, and the ministry of defence, which he resumed in 1899. He also held from the latter date the commissionerships of customs and electric telegraphs (till 21 Dec. 1899) and the commissionership of trade (till 29 Oct. 1900), in addition to the ministry of native affairs which he had held since 1893, and only gave up in December 1899. He attended Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee in London in 1897, when he was made a privy councillor and hon. LL.D. of Cambridge, but his democratic principles would not allow him to accept a knighthood. At the colonial conference of that year he proposed a consultative council of colonial representatives to advise the English government. The proposal was not carried. Brought much into touch with Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, the colonial secretary, he was attracted by his imperialistic views, and developed a strong sympathy with imperial federation and a preferential tariff. After his return to New Zealand, Seddon in 1898 passed the most important measure for which he was personally responsible, an old age pensions bill. In 1899 the pensioners numbered 7000, but in 1900 he enlarged the scope of the act by increasing the amount of the pension and lowering the age limit, and in 1906, the year of his death, over 12,000 persons were in receipt of pensions.
At the end of 1899 Seddon set the colonies an example of patriotism by despatching the first of nine contingents to help Great Britain in the South African war ; 6700 officers and men. and 6620 horses were despatched in the aggregate. After the general election (December 1899), Seddon had a majority of thirty-six in the new parliament. He again added to his other responsibilities the ministry of defence. On 8 October 1900 the Cook Islands were included within the boundaries of New Zealand. In 1901 his government arranged for a universal penny postage, and made coal mines and fire insurance concerns of the state.
Alike in the colony and in the empire at large Seddon was now a highly popular and imposing figure. In May 1902 he again set out for England to attend the coronation of King Edward VII, receiving before he left a congratulatory address and a testimonial which took the form of a purse of money (8 April). On his way he visited South Africa at the invitation of Lord Kitchener, and was warmly welcomed at Johannesburg and Pretoria, as well as at Cape Town. In London he was greeted with enthusiasm. At the colonial conference he urged a double policy of preferential tariffs within the Empire and a scheme for imperial defence, and dining his stay he was granted the freedom of the cities of Edinburgh, of Annan, and of St. Helens, and was made hon. LL.D. of Edinburgh University.
On 25 Oct. 1902 he was back in New Zealand. On 26 Nov. a new election gave him a majority of twenty, and he added the ministries of immigration and education to his other offices. Next year, while speaking repeatedly on the prosperity of the colony, he flung himself into ardent support of Mr. Chamberlain's scheme of imperial tariff reform. Naval defence also found in him a strong champion, and in the autmnn of 1903 he passed a naval defence bill which laid an annual charge of 40,000l. on New Zealand for the Australian squadron. At the same time he passed a Preferential and Reciprocal Trade Act, which favoured British imports at the expense of imports from foreign countries. In a series of enactments having what he termed a ’himianistic' basis, of which the chief was an act for the erection of state-owned workmen's dwellings, he sought to improve the health and comfort of the working-classes, particularly of mothers and young children.
In September 1904 he warmly declared against the introduction of Chinese labour into South Africa without the sanction of the votes of the white population. Troops, he said, would not have been sent to the war, if he could have foreseen the use to which the English victory would be put.
On 13 Dec. 1905 he fought his last general election, and his fifth as premier, securing, in a house of seventy-six white members, a majority of thirty-six. He remained minister of defence, labour, education, and immigration, and colonial treasurer, as well as premier. Later in the year he recommended a larger contribution to naval defence, forbade the admission of Japanese to the colony, promised to reduce indirect taxation and to increase the graduated land tax, and announced a larger surplus than had been known before.
Next year his health began to fail. On 12 May he left Wellington for Australia, to arrange for an international exhibition at Christchurch later in the year. He started from Sydney on his return voyage in the Oswestry Grange on 9 June 1906, and died at sea on the following day. He was buried at Wellington City cemetery on Cemetery Hill, and a monument in the form of a pillar was subsequently erected there by public and private subscription. On receipt of news of his death King Edward VII and the English government sent messages of sympathy. A memorial service was held in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, on 19 June. The New Zealand parliament granted Mrs. Seddon 6000’'l. on 28 Sept. 1906.
The social policy which Seddon helped to carry out was enlightened and commanded public sympathy, but his personal popularity was only partly due to his political principles. Frank and genial in manner and abounding in self-confidence, constantly moving about the country, he divined what the people of New Zealand wanted, and sought to satisfy their needs. His sympathy with democratic aspirations was combined with an imperialist fervour which notably won the hearts of the English people on his visits to Great Britain in 1897 and 1902. As an administrator he was energetic, industrious, and courageous. As a speaker he greatly improved in delivery with his years, and he was always liberal in information. He introduced over 550 bills into the lower house, and 180 of them became law.
New choir stalls were presented by Mrs. Seddon in his memory to the parish church of Eccleston, St. Helens, in February 1908. A bust with memorial tablet was unveiled in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, on 10 Feb. 1910 (cf. The Times, 11 Feb. 1910). A cartoon portrait of Seddon appeared in 'Vanity Fair' in 1902.
Seddon married at Melbourne in 1869 Lousia Jane, daughter of Captain John Spotswood, of Melbourne. She survived him with six daughters and three sons. His eldest son. Captain R. J. S. Seddon, fought with the New Zealand troops in the South African war. and was afterwards appointed military secretary to the defence minister. The second son, Mr. T. E. Y. Seddon, is a member of the house of representatives.
[J. Drummond's The Life and Work of R. J. Seddon, 1907; J. E. le Rossignol and W. D. Stewart, State Socialism in New Zealand; Gisborne, New Zealand Rulers, 1897 (with portrait); The Times, 11 and 12 June 1906 ; private information.]