“OF THE EMPIRE'S GREATEST MEN.”

New Zealand Graphic, 27 June 1906, Page 57

“OF THE EMPIRE'S GREATEST MEN.”

Mr Bent, Premier of Victoria, paid the following tribute:—“Mr Seddon was one of the Empire’s greatest men, and to him may fitly lie applied the term of ‘Empire-builder.’ He was, above all, a people's man. and the secret of his success probably was that his great aim was to improve the condition of the people. His place will be hard to fill. Not New Zealand alone, but Australia and Great Britain, have suffered great loss. He talked plainly to the Colonial Office, but he was a splendid Imperialist, a bighearted man, a 'humanist’ —to use his own term —a man of wonderful energy and capacity, by whose death the world will be much poorer. Perhaps the best tribute that I can pay him is that he tried to leave the world, or that part of it where he laboured, better than he found it. His deeds wiil live after him, and will shed a radiant light on the path of progress.”