Landseer was elected in 1875 to the
South Australian House of Assembly as the senior representative in the
multi-member electoral district of Mount Barker. In 1880 he was appointed to a
parliamentary select committee to investigate the building of a railway line to connect
Strathalbyn – hence the whole agricultural district – to the
Adelaide–
Melbourne inter-colonial railway line then under construction. He made sure the committee heard evidence supporting a branch line to Milang in addition to the main connecting line, and in November 1881 the enabling Act authorised both. By then, however,
Morgan, with its direct rail link to Adelaide, held primacy over the downstream ports. Moreover, the river trade was on the eve of decline. a record at the time. In an obituary, he was described as:always fearless in his advocacy of what he considered just, and equally courageous in opposing anything of which he could not approve. Mr Landseer was a picturesque figure. His snowy white hair and beard, his pink and white complexion, and a pleasant, dignified manner lent fitting presence to his position as Father of the House. As he grew eloquent his flowing, winding, and almost interminable sentences would remind one of his beloved Murray River — swift and serviceable, but not deep. After Landseer's resignation from parliament in 1899, his health was undermined by rheumatism and, later, heart disease; and his fortune by the decline of the river trade and reckless speculation in the Western Australian gold boom. He died on 27 August 1906 and is buried in Milang cemetery. His estate was sworn for probate in Victoria and South Australia at £15,716 (about $2.3 million in 2018). ==Personal==