MR. SEDDON.
WITH the death of Mr. Seddon a great figure goes out of the public life of the Empire. For, how- ever men might differ about his policy, and like or dislike particular utterances, there can be no question as to the force and vitality of the man. Like Cecil Rhodes, he cast his shadow over the land of his adoption. He personified New Zealand in the eyes, not only of Britain, but of the world. His utterances were assumed to be the authentic expression of her aspirations, his robust figure the pillar of her hopes. The Colony, whose settlement was begun by perhaps the most cultivated and select body of colonists who ever left the Mother-country, became under his influence the typical experimental democracy. Naturally, he did not carry the day without opposition. The original settlers, conservative and critical, had small love for this noisy Boanerges of the people. He gave them many chances for criticism, his blunders were frequent, his speeches were unwise, he had never any scruples about making himself ridiculous if be thought his cause might be served thereby. But personality is still the greatest motive force in life, and Mr. Seddon's intense vitality and unwe,a,rying earnestness overcame the superior logic of his opponents. New Zealand suddenly awoke to the fact that she was a young country and must enjoy her youth, and Mr. Seddon was the typical cicerone for such a frame of mind. He had all the crude force and overflowing optimism of a new country without history, and with an infinite horizon before her. His diagnosis of social evils was hasty and his remedies were rash, but he carried all before him by the force of his enthusiasm. His period of power synchronised with a time of great material prosperity in the Colony, and expedients, financial and otherwise, which were of doubtful economic value were lightly criticised because their burden was unfelt. Whether his works will be as acceptable in leaner years is a question on which we do not care to dogmatise, and which we sincerely hope will never be put to the test. But not only did Mr. Seddon's policy har- monise with the temper of his people ; the man himself was well fitted to capture the popular fancy. The old semi-aristocratic colonists had been replaced by a new class. miners, artisans, labourers, men without capital who had their way to make with their own hands from the start. To this new electorate Mr. Seddon was the obvious hero. Beginning life on the Bendigo goldfields in Australia, he came to New Zealand as a very young man, willing t o grow up with the country. He won his way first to a competence and then to fame, but he remained always in appearance and manner the pioneer. He had all the masculine virtues which endear a man to the citizens of a new and strenuous country. He never forgot a friend. He had unvarying kindness, courage, and cheerfulness. He never acquired the pomposity and affectation of the vulgarly successful. Above all, he had obviously and most intensely the interests of his people at heart. New Zealand was a passion with him. The slightest criticism of her was sufficient to rouse his fighting spirit, and what might seem to the world a boastful rhetoric was to her citizens only a reasonable warmth of patriotism.
Mr. Seddon's career raises the question of the relations between those two creeds, often assumed to conflict, democracy and Imperialism. Properly speaking, they are not in pari materia. The one is a method, the other an ideal, and the problem is best stated as the possibility of Empire on a democratic basis. Democracy, the rule of Everyman, is a fact. How far does it admit of the conception to which we roughly give the name of Empire P Mr. Seddon had no doubts on the matter. If ever mere was a democrat, he • was ono. Tradition, precedents, vested interests, things as by law and custom established, were all to him degrees of the infinitely small. When he saw a grievance, he wished to remedy it by,the shortest way possible, even though he sent all the conven- tions crashing like Alnaschar's basket. He wished every man in the community to be happy and prosperous, and he was prepared, in order to secure the widest distribution of comfort, to cut down monopolies with a ruthless hand. But with it all he was an earnest, almost a passionate, Imperialist. As the King's telegram worded it, he was "among the statesmen who have most zealously aided in fostering the sentiment of kinship on which the unity of the Empire depends." He was the moving spirit at the Conferences of Premiers. It was he who organised the New Zealand offers of assistance at the outbreak of the Boer War, and it was owing to him that that small Colony contributed a larger share, in proportion to her population and wealth, than any other part of the Empire. He was a strong advocate of universal military training, and a keen student of Imperial defence. To him, at any rate, democracy did not exclude race pride, and a sense of the duties as well as the rights of citizenship. It is not too much to say that it was because he was a democrat that he was an Imperialist. He believed that the future triumphs of his race could only be won on the basis of the whole Empire, and, while jealous of national liberties, he was equally jealous of Imperial union. He was not a profound political thinker, and occasionally, as in the early days of Mr. Chamberlain's crusade, he was guilty of extra- ordinary crudities. But he had the instinct of a leader of men for seeing a great question on its broadest and most simple lines. Whatever he might not understand, he had most completely grasped the meaning of the Imperial ideal, and on its behalf he was prepared at all times to spend his best energies. It was Mr. Seddon's achieve- ment that he succeeded in translating Imperialism into the language of extreme democracy.
From 1893, the date of his first Premierstip, till the day of his death he was practically dictator of his country. He filled an immense variety of administrative posts— Public Works, Defence, Mines, Labour, Education, Marine, the Treasury—and as an administrator he had the qualities which are necessary in a land still in the making. He had a keen eye for facts, he was not hampered by red-tape, and if his policies were sometimes dangerous in principle, they were at least efficiently carried out. Mr. Seddon was indeed the type of states- man whom it is likely that democracies will produce in the future in greater numbers. Having once captured the affections of the electorate, he was given a mandate for life. It is one of the oldest of political truisms that democracies tend to culminate in the rule of one man. The states- man acquires a kind of cumulative title. Having been long in power, he is assumed to have amassed an experi- ence so valuable that it would be a pity to sacrifice it by turning him out. In a sense the people are the least fickle of masters when once they give their confi- dence; and this fact provides for a genuine continuity in administration. It is to bureaucracies and aristocracies, where the members of a limited circle are jealous of each other, that we must look for real administrative caprice. The foundation of Empire is efficient administration, and the foundation of that in turn is the confidence of those who prescribe the task. If, as Mr. Seddon's career shows, an advanced democracy is capable of the fullest loyalty to its approven representative, then scepticism about the harmony of democracy and Imperialism seems out of place.
Previous page
