R. J. SEDDON

Southland Times, Issue 19462, 29 January 1925, Page 11

R. J. SEDDON

A MODERN PEN PICTURE, “KING DICK,” BY THE HON. W. P. REEVES. LONDON, December 12. One chapter in the revised edition of "The Long White Cloud,” which has now been published by Messis George Allen and Unwin, will be of very general interest to the people of New Zealand. The Hon. W. Pember Reeves has contributed, among other things, an entirely new chapter on the late Richard Seddon. Now that 20 years have elapsed since the popular Premier’s death, Mr Reeves evidently feels justified in giving a perfectly frank estimate of the personality of one who occupied the political stage in New Zealand for so many years. The author speaks of his old chief in the kindest way, but at the same time he sweeps aside many of the sentimental inaccuracies that have persisted even to the present day. “Most things about him appeared big, vigorous, restless,” Mr Reeves writes, “You thought him a man made for drums and tramplings. Only the skull was small. It was dolicho-cephalic, and held one of the most sleepless brains in New Zealand. The owner had an instinctive understanding of tactics, and a glorious disregard of hard knocks. He sometimes winced a bit under sarcasm, for to meet that he was unable; but to personal abuse, or the angriest denunciation, he was, or, what is just as useful, seemed to be indifferent. , . Of his speeches, enough to say that their number, bulk and lack of quality were a serious obstacle to his rise in political life. It is something of an enigma that a man of his shrewdness, industry, and lively appreciation of political realities should have managed for eleven years to talk so much and say so little. It should be noted, though, that he avoided acidity and insult. He was no swordsman, and, if he sometimes laid about him with a club, the hearty fashion in which he swung his weapon caused more smiles than sentiment. He went his way, emptying the House and filling Hansard, just as the humour took him. ... He went doggedly on, and in the scuffles of the years that followed Grey’s eclipse, it began fd be understood that this athletic talker, though not a condensing engine, might be a considerable motive power. UNDERSTOOD EVERY MOVE. “It is usually said that he shouldered his way to the front. It was not all mere shouldering, however; even in his early days in the House he knew his way about. When you came to talk confidentially with him about the political position, you found, perhaps to your surprise, that he understood every move on die board. He grasped the relative importance of things, could come to the point quickly, and kept a cool head. When action was called for he could tell you what to do? It may be added that when a Liberal principle was in question be was scarcely ever found in the wrong lobby.” In passing the Old Age Pensions Bill the author attributes to Mr Seddon real wisdom. ‘ln 1896,” he writes, “he lost both Sir Joseph Ward and Mr Reeves, and his side was left terribly weak in debate. Against him he had Sir Robert Stout, the best debater and platform speaker at that time in the country, a well-read Liberal, an experienced, cleanhanded politician, the best advocate in New Zealand, and a ‘bonny fighter 1 ’ The Opposition were otherwise well supplied with speaking power, while outside were the Prohibition orators. Seddon’s big majority shrank, and at one time, in 1897, it looked as though his opponents would get him down. The ground was moving under his feet; it was time to do something big. With acuteness, indeed, real wisdom, he decided to pass the Old Age Pensions Bill. The measure was his own, and was his greatest feat. He gradually shaped it until he made it what it was, and long remained, the best of its kind in the world. Then he took care that it was well and economically administered, and its success was complete.” WISE DOINGS, FOOLISH WORDS.

“Seddon was not, until his latest years,” says Mr Reeves, “a Gulliver among Lilliputians. His dictatorship, such as it was, began at the earliest in 1896; his special and important legislative work began in 1893. The Liberal-Labour policy submitted by the Balance Government to Parliament in 1891 would have been thought out and submitted almost precisely as it was if Mr Seddon had never !>een born. For his speeches on Imperial matters in England there is not much to be said. 'The Imperial policy that be supported was patriotic and arguably reasonable. It was that of Mr Joseph Chamberlain. If Mr Chamberlain was wrong about fiscal reform and other matters, then Seddon was wrong. Most colonists, however, do not think that Mr Chamberlain was wrong. Sir Starr Jameson once commented to the writer on the great superiority of Seddon’s doings and proposals at Imperial Conferences to his speeches outside. To some extent that was true generally of what he said and did. He was almost the converse of the merry, witty king who never said a foolish thing and never did a wise one. SEDDON AT HIS BEST. “To see Seddon at hie best you had ito sit opposite to him in a small room and talk with him openly about some matter that he thought important. Then, if it were at all intricate, it was a pleasure ■to mark how quickly he could come to the point, and separate the essential from ■ the unessential. Under such circumstances ;he could be brief, plain, one could almost say incisive. He was particularly worth ■' watching in some moment of pressure ar.fl • confusion in Parliament. Then amid t\ e small welter of lobby intrigues, grumblings ■ from supporters, Opposition attacks, hnd newspaper ‘rumours’ and prophecies, he re- ! mained perfectly collected, and usiUlly j took the right course. To the writer/ ie I sometimes seemed to manoeuvre over-njluch, . and to give himself more trouble thA he ; needed by ‘tactics.’ Still, it must M adi mitted that the tactics usually 'INFERIORITY OF STYGIAN SC®£RY. Mr Reeves pictures the shade Seddon in the Elysian fields, the voyage across the Styx. “In the days of old,” he writ®, “it was written of the Kings of JudatAnd Israel that when dead they ‘slept Muth their fathers.’ To those of us who ■new King Dick’ it does not seem possible to imagine him asleep, inert, or passive ■ any world, however vast and remote. ■We cannot picture him submitting to immobility. The shade of Richard Seddon, 035, may be sure, wasted no time over regrets /or a vanished earth. Could the swiftest journey beneath the stars surprise that undaunted ghost ? I trow not. Arrived on the banks of Styx he at once found plenty to do. One can hear him commenting promptly on the inferiority of Stygian river scenery to that of the sunlit streams of romantic New Zealand. Noting Charon’s leisurely methods of transport, did he suggest good-naturedly, to the aged fern-man the propriety of retirement on a suitable old-age pension? Did he take the helm when crossing the river? One thinks of him happy—npt in the enjoyment of rest, for rest he could not enjoy —but energetically happy, smilingly haranguing Elysian mass meetings in fields of ! amaranth and asphodel, where there is do time-limit for speeches.”