The New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, JUNE 14, 1906 RICHARD JOHN SEDDON

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 14, Issue 24, 14 June 1906, Page 17

The New Zealand TABLET

THURSDAY, JUNE 14, 1906 RICHARD JOHN SEDDON

To promote the cause of Religion and Justice- by the ways of Truth and Peace. Leo. xin, to the N.z. Tablet

friE Wishing-Rod of the Nibclungen Lied was (so said the legend) a slender rod of viEgin * gold. Whaever possessed it would be a ruler among men, and would see his heart's good ■y^Vglgj* wishes' fulfilled. A wish that lay near to IF^SQ^ the heart o[ Ihe late Premier of New Zea1 TO?* laml found pathetic expression at his silver jubilee : 'I want; to die in harness, not rust in idleness.' The former wish has been all too soon fulfilled. The late Mr. Setldon wvs one of those who realised, with Monsignor Dupanloup, that 'the destinies of the world are in the hands of those who know how to work.' Workf was to him a passion, a cult. ' Loul Brougham was once .besought not to compass more toil than four or five ordinary men could undertake. He, too, •was a iwlnrhviml worker in his day. But he survived his powers both of thought and toil : he outlived Ihe I o itical friends and foes of his splendid prime ; and lie sank at last to rest li'.e a kin;; dethroned and forgotten. Long before ho vanished tcyond the Veil, his once giant intellect Warned dim and smoky, like a spent candle. As one historian puts it, he 'passed like snow, long, long ago, with the time of the Barmecides.' He belonged to an elder world. And England, that had idolised him in the day of his strength, scarcely paused to hear the story of his passing.

Far different was the lot of the great figure that has just flitted from Ihc public lie of New Zealand and from the councils of the Empire. r ] he Wishing-Rod was in his hand on till at day of his silver jubilee : he died in harness. Ila passed out with his intclfeet still keen, at the culminating 1 point of a lons series of political triumj his, while the echoes of the huzzas of the great southern Continent were still ringing in his |ears. - The late Premier died a martyr to work — for others. A former Earl of Shrew^ury gave as his reason for accepting the office of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, that ' it was a place where a man had business enough to hinder him from falling asleep, and not enough to keep him awake.' Chesterfield had quite a different idea of the responsibilities of the position. He wrought to the .verge of physical break-down. Richard John Seddon. wrought beyond it. Bent on a needed holiday beyond the Tasman Sea, he plunged into a vortex of work. He well knew the nature and the magnitude of the" risks that he ran. Yet for the sake of his beloved country he cheerfully followed Ihe wlvrl of work from State to State, long after it had ceased to be enjoyable, when for long nights ' the grntle sleep irom heaven ' no longer ' slid into his soul/ and when the weariness of approaching death had set its grip upon him. It was — as he himself had described it— the hardest month's work

that he had ever done. There Is in Spain— wo cannot at this moment recall the name of the quaint old town —a clock-tower which bears £he Latin inscription : ' Omnes vulnerant ; ultima necat ' ('All of them— that is, the strokes— injure ; the last kills '.). For some years past, the long days of strenuous activity were so many axe or hammer blows at the leaning life of oiir late Premier. It was the last great effort in Australia that killed. The blow came suddenly— when he was on the waters, sailing (as his last message — aptly, we hopesaid) ' to God's own' Country.' And around his earthly remains the Empire mourns. And over them political friend and political foe bend side by side with a reverence and regret which make one feel thankful for the deep harmonies that lieyeneath the surface -clangor of our public life.

' We are like players, knowing not the powers Nor compass of the instrument we vex.' Yet (as Spencer says) 'by careful cultivation of the brain a special aim or object may be given to every life ; so that from eac!h we get all it is capable of yielding, giviag happiness to the individual and benefit to all mankind. 1 The late Mr. Scddon may be described by the somewhat inapt title of a self-made man. He c came to New Zealand from his native Lancashire 'with no other equipment than a stout heart, a clear 'head, and a pair of skilled hands '—the hands of a St. Helen's ironworker. But the real cultivation of his brain was acquired in the great open-air university of life. It; was in the mining and municipal and political life of his beloved West Coast that he developed those qualities whic-li made him a leader of men. Even when ' only a miner ' Member of Parliament in 1879, the Nestor of the House (says the author of l Tales of the Golden West ') considered him a foeman worthy of his steel. And a departed Premier remarked regarding him : ' That man will have to be reckoned with some day.' While still in the salad-days of his career as a legislator, he gave voice to some of those bold ideas that were then in advance of his time, but have sinje been embodied in the legislation of this and some other lands. He urged Sir George Grey, the Liberal leader of the day, to take as planks of his party's programme manhood suffrage, triennial Parliaments, and representation on a papular basis.' With the mere party-side of his political life we have no concern. But his long career as> a leader has been associated with measures such asi ai/biitflation in industrial pursuits, old-age pensions, etc., -which are not to ,be treated as mere partyquestions, but as earnest and, on the whole, successful contributions towards the sokition of some of the gravest social problems of our day. Every position in life (says Dean Stanley), great or small, ' can be made almost as great or small as we desire it.' The late Premieir of New Zealand tried at least to make his great and beneficial. ' They say,' remarks Shakespeare, ' best men are moulded oirt of faults.' The late Mr. Seddon had his limitations. Which is only another way of saying that he was human. But follower and opponent acknowledge, in the presence of his irresponsive clay, that he labored strenuously and patriotically fpr what he believed to be the honor and dignity and welfare of the beloved land of his adoption — ' God's own Country,' Ao-Tea-Roa, the Land of the Long White Cloud.

' No man,' says Newman, ' is given to see his work through. " Man goeth forth to his work and to his labor until the evening." There was One alone that began and finished and died.' 'New conditions bring with them new needs in the social and political world. And so the round of legislative toil goes on and on— plodding ever like a whinu-horse, though in a less monotonous track. Rowland Hill may or may not have spoken in terms of poetic hyperbole when he said : ' I .do not think much of ai man's religion unless his dog and cat are happi&r for it.' But the tomb oi every man — and

especially of every man in high and responsible stationought to bear in all truth this inscription : that his fellow-men were the better and the happier that he had lived. And this, w fl believe, is the epitaph that may be justly engraved abewe the remains of the late Richard John Seddon. We stand too near him and his work to get his perspective. Time-that rounds the ruggtd hills and mellows feeling— will gi v ,e him his true place in both national and human affairs. The things that were accidental or incidental in his remarkable career will fade as they recede towards the horizon of view. Those that were of permanent interest will remain. They will, we ween, suflice to make the departed statesman hulk large in the history of his adopted country ; and in the records of social progress, not a little.

The author of ' Business of Life ' hits off an old idea with this happy simile : ' It is often the case when you see a great man, like a ship, sailing proudly along the current of renown, that there is a little tug— his wife— whom you cannot see, Ibut who is directing his movements and supplying the motive power.' The late Mr. Seddon has many a time borne loving witness to the tender sympathy and encouragement given to him by lus wife in his business and political career. It was so in the days of old. The lady of the days of chivalry fought not in the touiney. But she buckled on the armor of her I. night and whispered loving encouragement in his ear, and healed his wounds in defeat, and crowned his brows in victory. And this (says Ruskin) was no mere caprice of romantic fashion. 'It is, 1 he adds, ' the type of an eternal truth. The soul's arm'oT is never well set to the heart unless a woman's hand has braced it.' Mrs. Seddon looked well to her husband's armor. But—' omnes vulnerant ; ultima necat.' From that last blow— the sudden enset of the results -of physical over-strain-not even fhe Valiant Woman's tenderest care could protect her knight. Th-re was a peculiar pathos in those last days which they spent in life together— when Triumph and Death met and Mssed, and the last heart-stroke tripped the heel of the last a nd crowning conquest. A hearWoaxi of sympathy to the bereaved wife and children ! May the Comforter of the afflicted gently draw the iron from their souls !