Review of Keviews, 1/S/OS. 



Richard John Seddon. 



135 



bar of public opinion to plead for their lives against 

 the destroying abolitioni'st, one of the great pleas in 

 their favour was that they were a nursery for states- 

 men whom they trained in the ways of Parliamentary 

 government and procedure after the model of the 

 great Mother of all Parliaments. Hence the know- 

 ledge and the training which Richard Seddon 

 brought out of Westland with him into the wider 

 sphere of Parliamentary life. It can be certainly 

 said that he, at all events, was a very fine fruit of 

 the Provincial system. He was not in Parliament 

 when the great struggle which ended in the aboli- 

 tion of the Provinces was fought. Had he been 

 it is probable that he w^ould have fought by 

 the side of Grey, Stout, Rolleston, Fitzherbert, 

 O'Rourke, Macandrew, Montgomery and the rest of 

 the provincial party who made valiant but inffec- 

 tive defence for the institutions which had trained 

 him. At any rate, it is certain that it was the wish 

 of his later years to remodel, in some important re- 

 spects the system of local government which had re- 

 placed the provincial system and had been found 

 not to be an altogether good fit. 



And what of other training, of the training usual 

 to men of his geiieration in early life ? It is strange, 

 but true, that though the son of parents who both 

 were teachers, Richard Seddon had but little educa- 

 tion in the ordinary sense of the term. His father 

 was the head master of the Eccleston Grammar 

 • School, near St. Helen's, in Lancashire, and his 

 mother before her marriage had been the head mis- 

 tress of the denominational school at Eccleston. 

 Naturally their wish was to make their boy one of 

 the brightest scholars of the Grammar School. But 

 the boy had other views. These prevailed, after 

 the inevitable struggle, and he himself expressed re- 

 gret at the fact in a speech he made the other day 

 at Riverview College, Sydney, exhorting the pupils 

 of that institution to make the most of the oppor- 

 tunities presented to them. But a still stranger 

 thing happened to him in his career. He became 

 Minister of Education in the colony he ruled so 

 wisely, and left a fine record in that capacity, a 

 record which proves at all events the sincerity of 

 the advice he gave to the Riverview scholars to 

 make the most of their opportunities, being, as it is. 

 a record of vast efforts to bring the opportunitie.s of 

 education of the best within reach of the poorest. 

 His school days, however, were not a failure by any 

 means. The bent of his mind was mechanical ; 

 hr gave his best effort in the direction of mechani- 

 cal engineering, absolutelv refusing to take interest 

 ill the classical side, and he made considerable 

 progress, so much that eventually he selected the 

 profession of engineering and served his time with 

 great credit. Thus equipped, he began life in Mel- 

 bourne in the railway workshops, and the ex- 

 perience he gained there stood him in good stead 

 when he accepted the portfolio of Public Works in 



the Ministry of Mr. Ballance. It is well to remem- 

 ber, moreover, that in after years the foreman of 

 the works in which he had served his time testified 

 that " Dick " was an excellent workman, whom he 

 would entrust with any job. It was one of the 

 pleasantest experiences of the said " Dick's " visit to 

 his native place in the days of his Premiership. 



Here, at all events, was training which taught 

 him to use his hands and his brains, and what more, 

 after all, can education do for a man who is indus- 

 trious and resourceful ? 



There was another side to the career in the Vic- 

 torian workshops. The men maintained an athletic 

 club, which the young immigrant promptly joined, 

 of which he made the best records in almost every 

 branch of athletics — boxing, running, wrestling, 

 walking — and it was not long before he was elected 

 president. Consider that this was before he was 

 twenty years of age, and then you will understand 

 something of the secret of the success of his mar- 

 vellous career. 



The club could not keep him in the workshops ; 

 gold mining failed to make him stay in Victoria. 

 At twenty-one he sailed for the West Coast gold- 

 fields of this country. The rest is as has been 

 sketched above. 



Political fortune was late in coming to Richard 

 Seddon. After his ten years' service under local 

 government he was destined to pass eleven years 

 more in the ranks of private membership. In the 

 early eighties a famous stonewall brought him to the 

 fiont. Half-a-dozen years before this the first stone- 

 wall in the Parliamentary history had been raised 

 by the Provincialists when at the last gasp before 

 an overwhelming hostile majority, and had been 

 found profitable, for it had forced a concession by 

 which the Act of Abolition was dated so as to give 

 the constituencies an opportunity of voting on the 

 question in general election. Encouraged by the 

 memory, the North and West joined forces' and 

 stonewalled a representation bill. The occasion is 

 now remembered by old Parliamentary hands chiefly 

 as having shown Richard Seddon's brilliant quali- 

 ties as a leader, thoroughly acquainted with the 

 forms of the House, and possessed a physique 

 which defieB the longest hours and the most wearing 

 trials. 



Before the fall of the Atkinson Ministry in 1884, 

 he became a power in the House as the Whip of 

 Sir George Grey's party-. It was suspected that the 

 party consisted of the leader and the whip — only 

 theni and no one more — but the jiarty forced recog- 

 nition and respect, and, in many negotiations at 

 critical times, gave good account of itself. Thus 

 was store of experience laid up for the great davs 

 to come. 



After the fall of the Atkinson Ministr\- there 

 came the Stout-Vogel Coalition, and Richard Sed- 

 don was not invited to take Cabinet rank. He had 



