136 



The Review of Reviews. 



Auguit 1, I90C. 



aJvised against coalition, faithful to his dream of 

 ultimate Liberal victory. Good work, however, was 

 done by the coalition on the Liberal side, and in 

 that the Western man joined with all his might. 

 There were some remarkable episodes, 'such, for 

 example, as the fight for the Midland Railway, in 

 which the native shrewdness of the West w^as ver\' 

 much forward. When the coalition was in the or- 

 dinary course defeated and another Atkinson Minis- 

 try came to power, the Liberal ranks became 

 stronger, drawing together, and the value of Richard 

 Seddon as a debater of pith and mettle came to be 

 recognised. Not a polished debater was he by any 

 means. But his shrewdness and his persistency and 

 his knack of saying the right thing in the roughest 

 way, and his growing knowledge of every subject 

 under discussion, compelled respect for his per- 

 sonality, and before the end of the Atkinson regime 

 Richard Seddon was acknowledged by the Liberal 

 leaders as a man not to be passed over at the next 

 opportunity. 



That opportunity came after the great Maritime 

 Strike, which, though it failed utterly as a strike, 

 gave the victory at the next election (November, 

 1890) to the Liberals. Finding strikes unprofitable, 

 illogical and barbarous. Labour turned its attention 

 to Parliament, allied itself with the Liberal leaders, 

 was easily persuaded to abandon all thought of the 

 third party system, and went loyally into line -.vilh 

 Mr. Ballance on the principle -apparently not re- 

 garded in some countries as possible — of mutual 

 benefit and reciprocal give and take. The Liberals 

 swept the polls, Mr. Ballance formed his Ministrv, 

 and Richard Seddon had a place in it as Minister 

 of Public Works, Minister of Mines, and Minister of 

 Defence. Success at last, after twent)'-one years of 

 probation. 



The new government had a tremendous task be- 

 fore it, but it did not forget the claims of its allies 

 of the Labour party. An Act for the Proper Regula- 

 tion and Supenision of Coal Mines, an Act for the 

 Protection of Workmen's Wages by Lien in their Re- 

 lation with Contractors, a Factories Act on stringent 

 lines, a Truck Act, much needed, provided together 

 with the organisation of a Labour Bureau which 

 from the start coped successfully with the conges- 

 tion of Labour by dispersing the unemployed among 

 the districts where there was work for the asking, 

 were a good instalment of the promised programme. 

 The more so as the Government had to fulfil their 

 promise to change the incidence of taxation from 

 the obnoxious property tax to the present system of 

 taxing land and income, the former with a decided 

 graduation to discourage the aggregation of land in 

 large estates. This was a difficult subject held by 

 manv Liberals (among them those who had held 

 office and had found it impossible to fulfil their 

 promises) to be impossible. In addition there was 

 the necessity for passing a new Land Act in further- 



ance of the election promises to popularise land 

 settlement. The latter proved a Herculean task, 

 and left a record of debates in Hansard little short 

 of marvellous. The former looked at first sight 

 quite hopeless, but the determination and ability 

 of the Cabinet succeeded in shaping a measure 

 which has, while relieving the owners of unprofitable 

 property, proved an important source of revenue. 



In this programme Richard Seddon took his full 

 share, besides attending to the work of his three 

 departments in strenuous fashion. As Minister nf 

 Mines he made it his first care to. save the lands ot 

 the West from the hands of a railway company 

 with a large land concession. He was thought by 

 many to have strained his powers, and indeed to 

 have passed the bounds of justice. But that he was 

 eminently right was proved later on by the verdict 

 of the greatest arbitration ever arranged in this 

 countrv'. 



As the head of the Public \\ orks Department he 

 soon came to loggerheads with the Railway Com- 

 missioners. Not because he objected to them cr 

 any of them on personal grounds — on the contrary, 

 he had always the highest opinion of the men — but 

 because he had a conviction that to take the man- 

 agement of anv department of State out of the hands 

 of the representatives of the State was bad de- 

 mocracy. He did not succeed in getting the man- 

 agement back into the hands of the representatives 

 till he had been two years in the Premiership, but 

 he kept up his efforts without ceasing, ever quoting 

 the maxim — the keynote of all his policy, it was 

 from first to last — '' Trust the People." The result 

 has been complete justification of the course he 

 adopted. 



In 1893 the death of Mr. Ballance brought Pre- 

 miership suddenly within his grasp. Its chances 

 found him modest. There is extant a telegram of 

 his to Sir George Grey, the veteran friend, adviser 

 and collaborator of his early political days 

 asking who should be Premier. The reply came 

 back prompt from the veteran : ■' Certainly, you. ' 

 There was another telegram more urgent, more de- 

 tailed, more fatherly in tone, of which Mr. Seddon 

 often said that it had decided his hesitating foot- 

 steps. Most people find a difficulty in believing that 

 anything could have kept back so strong a man as 

 this in such a crisis of his life. Be that as it may, 

 Richard Seddon was sworn in as Premier and head 

 of the Government on May ist, 1893. It proved 

 the first day of what New Zealanders are fond of 

 calling the " record Premiership." It certainly was 

 unique. It began with a Cabinet not too stron_;lv 

 welded together, and it ended wnth the support of 

 practically the whole people of New Zealand. It 

 saw five general elections, each one of which added 

 to the Premier's strength in the countp.-. Even.' 

 Parliament of its course heard the taunt that he 

 was losing his initiative, and every session swept it 



