SIR ROBERT STOUT AT MANCHESTER.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2665, 22 November 1909, Page 2

SIR ROBERT STOUT AT MANCHESTER.

DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF LAWS

Sir Robert Stout, Chancellor of the Now Zealand University, visited Manchester, early in October, to receive the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Victoria University (says the London correspondent of the “Auckland Star”). The ceremony was presided over by Lord Morley, the Ghancclloi of Victoria University. Three other honorary degrees-were conferred at the same time, Mr. Whitelaw Reid being made a Doctor of Laws, Sir Alfred Lvall a Doctor of Letters, and Dr Otto WaT.ach a Doctor of Science. Lord Mcrley presented the degrees, and. Mr. Whitelaw Reid replied on behalf of the recipients. . . . . Sir Robert Stout was introduced to the assemblage by Professor Alexander in a chort speech. “Among these, _he said, “whom an ancestral instinct drives from their liomes to found new Scotlands iii all quarters of tlm globe, vrtli all the virtues of the original country and some additional ones, none living is more conspicuous for public services than the Chief Justice of New Zealand, ip whom the blcod-red myrtle and oho yellow kowliai of one end of the Empire are found blooming upon rock transplanted from the Shetland Islands at the other end. If the air in which lie lives lias sustained his untiring energy and his lucidity of thought and vision, he may owe to liis forefathers some part of his tenacity of principle and possibly also of this delight in doing battle. As first Minister of the Crown he guided liis country through some of her dark years of stress and insecurity. Imbued with the passion of ccmality and freedom. and though touched, yet not infected, with that unquestioning confidence in the action of the State, with which the soil of New Zealand is saturated, lie has witnessed in varying moods of approval or distrust, but winning admiration in every mood, the series of legislative and social enterprises which h:\vo drawn all eyes upon that country. His withdrawal from Parliament, which impoverished political life, left him free to dispense equal and unbiassed justice from its highest source, and to continue his lifelong and splendid devotion to the cause of temperance—(cries of “Oh”) —and his zeal in the interests of higher education. We greet in him the Chancellor of the University of New Zealand, sistered with us in her hopes and her ideals, which, receiving somesball I say, rather of her best- or of ours ?”