eighty-seven hours to get the Bill through committee. “I doubt if I could bear the strain again,” he remarked to a friend six years afterwards; “a man does not want to do that more than once or twice in a lifetime.”
A short sketch has been given in a previous chapter of Sir Harry Atkinson’s scheme of annuities. The proposal came from Canon Blakely, who took an absorbing interest in the subject, and wrote many newspaper articles showing that legislative action was feasible as well as desirable. Sir Harry was a humanist himself. He was thoroughly in earnest in all his attempts to improve the people’s conditions; but he lacked a great deal that Mr. Seddon possessed, and failed to carry his proposals to the last stages. His scheme was supported in a dreamy manner by the country when he “stumped” the electorates with it in 1882, but he found that Parliament would not have it, and he allowed it to drop quietly out of politics. He had several conversations on the subject at the time with Mr. Seddon, who told him that a scheme involving compulsory contributions must fail in any country except Germany, where a standing army could enforce the payments. Mr. Seddon always believed that an Old Age Pensions scheme based on compulsory contributions was unworkable in a British country; the majority of the working-men, even in New Zealand, where wages were high, could not afford to pay. It was against the principle of compulsory contributions that he fought the hardest fights with members of the House, several of whom insisted upon having compulsory contributions or nothing. He did not believe it possible for the ordinary working-man, who maintains a family, pays rent, settles his accounts, and sends his children to school until they have passed the Sixth Standard, to pay insurance premiums or make other provision for old age.
He believed that the theoretical part of an Old Age Pensions scheme had been fully dealt with. There was nothing for him to do in that field. But there was great work to be done in devising a practical scheme, which would be applicable to the needs and circumstances of New Zealand. That was where his mission lay, and he took up the task carefully, thoughtfully, unflinchingly, and cheerfully.
