“ He combined his premiership with various offices—as colonial treasurer, minister for education, postmaster-general, telegraph commissioner, minister of marine, minister for land purchase, and minister for labour,—but his strenuous personality, and the confidence inspired by his determination to make New Zealand a living force among the British dominions, were the dominating features in all his course of action. His large physique, his profound earnestness, his gift of popular oratory, his expansive kindliness and his power of dealing with men, made him supreme among his own people. ”