THE LATE PREMIER.

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 148, 23 June 1906, Page 9

THE LATE PREMIER.

* Richard Seddon, one of the great personalities of Australasian history (writes tho Bulletin) died dramatically on Sunday,, 10th inst., at sea. Midnight on Saturday he hurried from a banquet table to catch tho steamer for Maoriland t which had been delayed to allow hitfi ,that, ,the last of a series of triumphant festivities marking Australia's appreciation of his work. Within a few hours his heart, which had carried him through so many great struggles, suddenly „ failed, and without a pang he gaye 1 up ,-his , useful life. The mourning vessel brought the body back to Sydney. The Australian welcome to the Maoriland statesman had been too much for his health. For fevered weeks in Sydney and in Melbourne the old man ran from.- one festivity to another. Receptions^ lunches, dinners, suppers, levees, marked each day, and all the day. When -he left his own country the Maoriland Premier was in poor health, and the trip to Australia was 'designed in part as a recuperative one. Doctors before had issued to him grave warnings. But the big-hearted man, as robust in his appreciation of human kind- ] ness and fellowship as in his old digger days, had not the heart to refuse to fall in with the full programme of welcome and homago which the Australan people had prepared. He would haves deemed it a slight to disinterested kindness to have missed one of the receptions' arranged in his honour. And perhaps/ after all, the manner and time of death were not unfitting. He had come away, from Maoriland after more than a decade of fruitful and courageous life as its absolute ruler, to Australia where, in the old days, he had toiled with, pick and shovel as a workman. He had found that in the larger life of the Australian people was kept a shrine for his achievements, and that here we watched with the close sympathy of kindred his great career. The huzzahs of four million Australians were still in Seddon's ears as ho faded into unconsciousness. And the knowledge was in his mind that, valuable as his work had been to Maoriland, its fruitfulness had not ended there, but had extended to the Commonwealth, affording a great example and a great re-assurance of tho ultimate soundness and sanity of legislation designed to make the rewards of life .moro closely correspond with the labour of life. There were blofs, of course, on the | Seddon rule. He was a great ruler, but, after all, only .human. To one of the great mistakes of his career — the- Eiadheaded enthusiasm for the war against the Boers — Seddon was prompted somewhat by local conditions. Maoriland has always inclined to be "Imperialis- | tic." Its sense of dependence for safety on the British navy is abject. When the war against the Boer farmers was opened, the. story that victory was necessary to prevent Britain from falling into ruin was eagerly swallowed in Maoriland, and Seddop was faced by a general outbreak of war fever. With all his courage, Seddon never was inclined to lead a forlorn hope, and he joined in the Jingoism which he could not control. Afterwards he showed some grace of repentance. When the Chinese slaves swarmed over South Africa and disclosed the real purpose of the Boer war, Seddon recanted and was as stienuous in his protests as he had been in his previous war passion. But in his failure to appreciate, and act upon, the fact that Maoriland, it it is to continue its national existence with any sure confidence of safety, must be self-reliant — in defence as in industries—^and must face the problem of keeping its homes free from an invader without timorous and foolish reliance on any outside power, Seddon failed | in patriotic statesmanship. His incapacity in regard to finance was another blot on a great administrator. The social legislation which he passed put Maoriland in an exceptionally favourable position to begin the task of lifting its mortgage to the foreign money-lender. But Seddon could never understand the necessity for undertaking such a difficult task. Money borrowed he looked upon almost in the light of money earned, aud thus an insidious unsettling influence was left at the base of all his advanced policy — an influence which will soon have to be seriously reckoned with, and may even bring the whole fabric toppling down in ruin. Yet, allowing full discount for his faults, giving oven some weight to the sneers which pallid witlings direct against the little foibles of a great man, Richard Seddon deserves a niche in the Australasian tompl* of Fame, with his predecessors in Government, George Grey and Ballan-:e. He, with them, belongs to Australasia, not merely to Maori! aod, and Australia is proud to make the claim. Tho man had sympathy and he had courage. Those two qualities make greatness.