THE COALITION GOVERNMENT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1621, 7 October 1916, Page 4

THE COALITION GOVERNMENT.

A defence of the Coalition Cabinet of Great Britain was recently made by Mr Bonar Law, Leader of the Unionist Parly, which in the existing circumstances of politics in New Zealand is of interest. Mr Bonar Law said: “It is a fact that there 1 have been differences of opinion among us. There were differences among the Unionist members of the Cabinet. Although we came to the same conclusion as to what was the right thing to lie done, we arrived at it from different roads and holding different views. But there are occasions when it seems that there are other considerations even more important than maintaining Ihe union of the party, and I think it is only right that I should say to you, as I said to my colleagues in the House of Commons, and to th<> party at the Carllon Cluli, that I was prepared even to run the risk of disunion in the party for a course which at the time. I thought right. But lam glad to say that (hat difference ha<s gone." Explaining the reasons why the Coalition Government was formed, Mr Bonar Law said that he felt that it was impossible to be in a Government and to criticise it. One must be either in a Government or out of il. He was bound to say—and he thought every one of his Unionist colleagues in the Cabinet would say the same thing—that their Liberal colleagues had dealt fairly with them during the continuance of the Coa lit ion Government.