The political career of the late Sir Joseph Ward was distinguished by two features which have marked several other great lives in Colonial history: his rise from smallest beginnings to the highest position in the Dominion and his quick, vigorous, far-seeing share in the affairs of the British Empire. Like his chief, Seddon, he was one of those men who made their way upwards without any assistance, by inherent merit and force of character. Ambition was strong in him, but it was ambition with sound and brilliant capacity behind it. The spirit of initiative was his in an unusual degree; he was not afraid of criticism once he was convinced that his actions were in the country's best interests. He was for forty years a consistent champion of Liberal principles in Government, and he was responsible for necessary reforms and innovations in the country's administration. Like Ballance and Seddon, he was a victim of overwork; he remained in office too long, with that fatal clinging to administrative power which has shortened many a great man's life.

Sir Joseph Ward was one of a pair of bright and promising young men who entered the New Zealand Parliament in the latter part of the ‘Eighties and who soon began to take a prominent share in the beginnings of the Liberal movement in politics. They came in at the parting of the ways; before long they were to travel together the fascinating highway of bold “experimental” legislation. The other young man of great gifts was W. P. Reeves. Ward came from Awarua, the Bluff, where he had begun his working career as a telegraph messenger boy. Ward owed nothing to the kindly fortune that smiled on Reeves’ young days. His education was the most elementary; the world of work and business was his college and university. He was generally described as a young man of push and enterprise who was afraid of nothing. Certainly he was not afraid of pushing in among his elders. He was a borough councillor in Campbelltown, the Bluff township, at the age of twenty-one; indeed he was not quite of age when he was elected.

He was not New Zealand-born; Melbourne was his native town; but he came as a child to this country with his parents, and he grew up a thoroughgoing young New Zealander, developing a vigorous spirit of local patriotism. He was a greatly popular young citizen of the Bluff; he took a leading part in social and sport movements; he developed the spirit of discussion and debate on local affairs.

He did not long remain content with carrying other people's messages and working for the Government. At twenty he was on his own account in business in a small way, and soon to expand greatly.

Young J. G. Ward—they called him “Joe” or “Joey” then and all his life, which matched Seddon's “Dick,” “Good old Dick” —was speedily found to be a quick, keen, incisive speaker, with a particularly able grasp of financial matters. He made a good impression in Parliament, as elsewhere, by his pleasant manner, his brisk debonair ways, his agreeable voice that had not then taken on the rather high petulant note the wear and irritation of politics sometimes gave it in later life. He represented Awarua capably from 1887 onward, and, with intervals, he continued to be the elect of that southernmost constituency all his life.