red-tape officers, who were not used to being hustled, and his clamour and persistence led the Minister in charge of the Mines Department to warn a new Goldfields Warden that “there is a political agitator named Seddon down there who makes a great deal of row because there is no one to attend to the rush on the Kumara field.”
Knowing every water-right in the district and the history of every claim, Mr. Seddon was well armed against the lawyers who came from the large towns to conduct cases against his clients. One of these lawyers once remarked that he was a distinct loss to the legal profession.
At least one Warden[1] was impressed by his ability. “His cleverness as an advocate,” he says, “was beyond question. He never lost a chance when any legal point gave him an opportunity, and the readiness with which he grasped the bearing of legal matters was remarkable, although, as we now know, this was only one indication of the brain power and mental acuteness with which he was so abundantly endowed. The litigious digger of that day delighted in nothing more than a good legal technicality, especially when he had nothing else to trust to, and he rightly appreciated the qualities of an advocate who had the capacity of discovering a good technical point, and making the most of it.
Mr. Seddon’s excellence as an advocate was necessarily somewhat impaired by the want of regular legal training, and this sometimes caused a certain want of proportion in the view which he took of the importance of the different parts of a case, and caused him to labour too much at some point which would really have been more telling if merely suggested. But I have as little doubt that, with a legal education, he could have made a great name at the bar as gratification in the knowledge that he was reserved for better and greater work.”
It would be futile to deny that Mr. Seddon was, even at this early date, a confirmed egotist. He had an unvarying belief in his own abilities. When an old digger declared loudly at a public meeting that “Our Dick’ll be Governor of New Zealand,” the object of his enthusiastic prophecy was
- ↑ Dr. Giles.
