THE LAND REFORMER.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CVI, Issue 12573, 7 August 1901, Page 4

THE LAND REFORMER.

The anxious -thoughts of the colony have turned- constantly -during recent- months to the pathetic figure of the great land reformer, struggling so bravely against the physical pains born of a too faithful service of his country. Nothing touches the heart more nearly than the sight of a strong man jn agony. A giant in frame, a very Samson.in the fight, John M’Kenzie looked as though the -whips and scorns of time moved him no more than the buffetings of the snowstorms and the gales of his native hills. He was already well past middle age when ten years! ago he stood up in Parliament as the chosen champion of the land reformers, yet those who knew him found him stronger in mind and body than when, just twenty years before, he had entered political life in Otago. But from the moment when be joined Mr Ballanoe’s Ministry and set to give the colony the land system he had advocated so strenuously as a private member, the health-giving brae was deserted for the office and the Council Chamber. He sorely missed, as we know, the invigorating life of his country home, yet ho never thought of turning hack from his -set purpose. The quality which his opponents used to call sheer obstinacy kepkhim riveted, day in, day out, to Bills and papers and statistics, schemes and proposals, amendments and suggestions, till he- had mastered all the details of the great State Department over which he presided. F/ven when he had seen, his principle embodied in the Statute Book, he ignored the warnings of impending physical evil and remained at his post, supervising the administration of his own measures and raising the Lands Office to the dignity and position of the best-organised and most important department of the whole State machinery. His birth and training unfitted John M’Kenzie in most respects for the career of a statesman. He lacked ‘almost everything we knew as education. He was a shepherd lad of the Highlands, unlettered, untaught, save by , the mountains, the winds and the trees, and those unseen tutors that circle round the heads of the children of the hills. Sheer native genius made him what he- was. Reading, writing and summing, and none in any -degree of excellence, were his sole accomplishments at an age when New Zealand youths have long left school. When he came to New Zealand, a young man whose one idea was to obtain land and farm it for himself, lie is said to have found the Saxon speech still a ww-ttov af difficulty. Indeed, it

often happened that as a Minister of the Crown, moving the. second readings of important Bills, he failed hopelessly to find the words he needed, and in moments of excitement he frequently expressed with painful frankness, at times it seemed almost brutality, ideas which he would fain have clothed in softer and more polished words. His speech was always than his heart, and no man listening to his addresses on the subject dearest to him could miss the intense earnestness of his spirit. “Honest John” they called him in those days, appreciating the fact that thougn his words might be hard, basnet,ions and his thoughts were genuine and his motives pure. His lack of culture makes his achievement the more remarkable, for ‘he belonged absolutely, to the practical type of Scotsman. There are scholars and metaphysicians born in the Scotch mists, but he was none of them. He had none of the l saving graces, the facility of expression, the ease of gesture, the musical tone of voice that help, outthe orator. He was wanting largely even in the sense of humour. But he had depth of mind, and above all a great earnestness of purpose that compelled attention. He brought with him, from- his native country, a deep sense of the evils of unrestricted landlordism. When he first entered policies, in (the Otago Provincial Council, lie was a small fanner pleading for the small farmers, and twenty years later, moving the second reading of the famous Land Bill, -he told the House of Representatives that land reform was his desire as soon as he was old enough to think. “ My, opinion on this subject,” he said, with a poetic touch that was rare with him, “ may have been hastened and may have been matured by what I saw myself when I was a young boy in my native laud. I saw there beautiful valleys, straths and glens, at the will of one individual landlord, depopulated of a people whose forefathers had held the country for I have seen even worse than that—if worse can be—and that is that the people there were ground down to slavery to find rack-rent for the landlord as the only condition on which they could hold the land of their forefathers.” He was . determined that, so far as lay in his power, such -a state of things should be rendered impossible in New Zealand. Jolni M’Kenzie was not the only land reformer we have had. He gave' full credit to those who had attempted the task before him,' and expressly declared, that his own measures were but an advance on the liberal laws which Sir Harry Atkinson, Air Donald Reid, Sir Robert Stout, Mr Rollcston, Mr Ballance and Mr Richardson had succeeded in placing on the Statute Book. But morcsJ than any of these he concentrated his attention on tho subject. He had not the wide and diffused interests that limited the zeal of Mr Rolleston and Sir Robert Stout in the matter of land settlement, and moreover he had the advantage of working with a sympathetic Ministry. Land settlement was in the very front of the reforms advocated by Mr Ballance’s new Liberal party and it is now an open secret that John M’Kmie had to educate his colleagues, as well as his followers and the country. Then, too, the Government of which he was a member had a sufficiently.long lease of power to enable him to organise his Department on the most systematic lines, and while previous Ministers of Lands had done little more than pass measures,, he was able to carry his policy into actual practice, We owe the existence of the Cheviot Settlement to his magnificent courage and energy more than to anything else, and if the colony raises no other monument to his memory, that, at least, will remain for -.all time. Wo have said little of his position* in general politics and of his relations with other politicians of his day. The story is told elsewhere, and it is,_ after all, as the great Minister of Lands that we remember John M’Kenzie-to-day. He wals a man of remarkable, if not commanding, personality. His courage, his endurance, physical and •mental, his energy, his earnestness, his simplicity of thought and life, these are qualities known to every member. of the community. There was in his nature the deep religioxis vein common among his countrymen. “ God-fearing ”id a term that has unhappily fallen, into disuse ; it might be applied to John M’Kenzie with perfect appropriateness. He was a man of strong friendships, though the usual accompaniment of strong antipathies seems to have been wanting. An impulse might lead him to attack a friend in debate, but it was never known to break the tie of affection or esteem. He has been accused of conservatism on social questions, of indifference to humanitarian' movements. His singleminded devotion to the subject of land reform gave such attacks the colour of justi- • fication, but there was nothing more. His active career closed in circumstances that left no doubt as to the magnitude of the sacrifice he had made for the colony, and we believe that when he was called to the Legislative Council last year it was the earnest prayer of the whole community that he might -be spared to take a part once more in politics. He has been honoured by the colony and by the Kmpire; but the strangely touching scene when knighthood was conferred 1 upon him by his Sovereign’s son warned those who stood around that he would nob long enjoy the worldly rewards of his labour. The honour was approved; with a unanimity almost- unknown in colonial life. The people had come to regard him as a) friend. There has been no more striking figure in New Zealand politics in recent years than that of John M’Kenzie,- and at his death there is no need to ask for hun the favour of a eulogy. The living and the dead alike claim an impartial estimation ; John M’Kenzie’s reputation will suffer nothing by the revelation of the whole truth.