happiness will attend you, that your numbers may increase, and that you may live in amity, contented and happy, side by side with the Europeans of this colony.”
In 1900, he passed the Maori Lands Administration Act, which prevents the Maoris from pauperising themselves by selling any more of their lands, and allows the Government to advance moneys to the Maoris to make roads and improve their lands in other ways for their own use and occupation.
Mr. Seddon has been the centre around which the fighters in the great temperance agitation have moved during the past thirteen years. He passed three licensing Acts, the first in 1893, the second in 1895, and the third in 1903 and each called forth all his skill and determination.
The temperance movement has never entered into party disputes. It has taken its leaders from both sides of the House. Its vote goes to itself, and in general politics it divides its favours, but leans more to the Liberals than to the Conservatives. Mr. Seddon used his influence to keep it in that position. To many New Zealanders it is the end-all of reform. To him it was only one great movement among many; and he did not like to see it, at the general elections, over-shadowing other questions, which he considered more important. He was a kind of buffer between the fierce contending leaders. He took a middle course, which pleased the extremists at neither end of the question, but which, he believed, was what the colony as a whole desired. “The Seddon Government,” he told the temperance leaders and the representatives of the liquor trade, “is independent of both of you, and we are here to do what is right and just.” Behind the clamorous extremists he saw the “moderates,” and he legislated for them. It is a “give-and-take” policy, as he himself described it. He did not feel that he was called upon to join the temperance crusade, but he believed that it was his duty to give effect to the desires and aspirations of the people as far as he could ascertain the direction in which they went.
“I know that I have no friends in connection with this Bill,” he said in 1903, “and that I shall have no thanks, but perhaps the curses of both sides; but I am prepared to stand
