Ladies and Gentlemen,—

This is only the first of what I hope will be a series of addresses I shall have the great pleasure of delivering before you during the electoral campaign that has now begun. Instead of at once submitting to you, as I hope to do so on a future occasion, my detailed views on the specific questions that are likely ere long to engage the attention of Parliament, it seemed best that I should give you an outline sketch of how the political situation appears to me as a whole, and what are the general aims with which I seek to enter colonial public life. We will leave details till a later time. The Rangitikei and Feilding papers have, it is true, been put in possession of some of the special "planks" in my "platform," and I may touch on them this evening, but only briefly. This, therefore, is merely an introductory address. And in giving it I may be at a disadvantage, as compared with some of my opponents, in confronting a part of the electorate where I am as yet a comparative stranger. But, ladies and gentlemen, I take heart of grace by reflecting that in Rangitikei and in Manawatu, from the banks of which river I hail, we are all one district, and are all going to work together as friends for the advancement of that district and of the grand young country of which we are fellow citizens.

It is also a very particular gratification that I derive from the fact that I can address you as "Ladies and Gentlemen." From boyhood upwards I have worked for Woman Suffrage. Long before it was carried, either here or anywhere else except in Wyoming in the United States, I have button-holed members of Parliament, I have made myself "all things to all men" in endeavouring to appeal to the idiosyncrasies of each, and was much inclined to sing a "Nunc Dimittis" when the great measure was passed in New Zealand—the first to adopt it among the dominions of the British Crown. You may therefore imagine my pleasure on mounting a platform in my first political campaign, at being able to hail all our sisters as full fellow-citizens—arbiters, equally with our brothers, of the Parliamentary aspirant's fate.