Chapter XIX.
The Imperialist.
Mr. Seddon’s mind had now broadened amazingly. He looked at everything through New Zealand’s spectacles. When great colonial problems ranged themselves rapidly in front of him, he seized them one after another, solved them, and waited for more. He had constituted himself a guardian of the colony’s interests in the same way as he had been the guardian of Westland’s interests in his earlier days; and all who tried to depreciate the colony could rely upon meeting in him an unrelenting opponent. With him it was New Zealand against the whole world. Possibly he took himself and his darling colony too seriously. He had no reason to feel surprised when he found that other people declined to take New Zealand at his valuation. Rightly or wrongly, however, there was no place like New Zealand as far as he was concerned, and no other interests were worth considering. He had accepted Sir George Grey’s doctrine of national expansion; but there is nothing to show that in the first years of his Premiership he had any thought of applying it or of taking a part in urging it on the nation. He had no “foreign policy” then, and, apparently, no desire for one. All his hopes and aspirations were contained in “this grand little country of ours, Sir, than which there is not a better place in the whole British Empire.”
While he was in this stage of his development, there came upon him a far-reaching event, which was to lead him further than he had ever dreamed of going. He had been changed from a member of an obscure local body to a member of Parliament, from a parochial politician to the leader of a political party, and from a party leader to a colonial statesman.
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