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 are you going to take a rest?” his friend asked him. “Oh yes,” he replied. “There will be the trip across; that will be nearly a week; and then I am not going to worry myself on the other side. There will be reciprocity, the Hebrides, and defence, and, perhaps, one or two other things to talk over with the Federal Premier, but this will be nothing compared with what I am doing here. Oh yes; I am going to take a rest.” “And I suppose that you will be banqueted and interviewed, and expected to make speeches just as you are here.” “No, I am going on a holiday. It must be a holiday. I can’t give up work altogether while I can be of any use to the country, but I am not going to throw my life away. The doctors have treated me very frankly. They say that I have gone as far as it is safe to go, and that they won’t be responsible if I go any further. It is hard, because there is so much left to do, but I suppose I must stop.”

He took a little rest while on the water, but politics and public affairs were always uppermost in his mind. On the day before he reached Sydney, he wrote a long letter to a gentleman in England who had been a political opponent of his in New Zealand many years previously. In this letter, he said:—

“We often think of you, and of your kindness and attention to us when we were in the Mother Country. My kind feeling towards you dates much farther back, for you were very considerate and kind to me, although, perhaps, as a young colt and turbulent spirit, I gave you more trouble than all the rest put together. Those were happy days, and looking back to those who took part I think we were not as generous to each other as we might have been, and perhaps construction was placed upon the actions of leading men of those days which, viewed in the light of the experience I have had myself, was hardly justifiable, and which now leads me to respect their memories. There is nothing like responsibility for sobering one.

“A funny thing occurred in respect to the well-remembered ‘compact’ of ’79, when Swanson died. Considered in the light of subsequent events, I thought, and still think, that what the four Auckland members did at the time was the wrong thing to do, and yet the actions of Colbeck, Hurst, Wood, and Swanson were, with one or two exceptions, of such a character as to modify the strictures applied to the method adopted.

“I must thank you very kindly for your congratulations on the result of the last elections. It is true time works many changes, and you would be surprised to know the large number of people who supported and helped me. But their action was in accordance with common sense, and in no way reflected on their intelligence, and can be put in the following terms:—‘With Seddon we know where we are, and he will not go to the extremes. If anything happens to him we might get a weak Government, and then what would happen to us? It is