WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 10 February 1917, Page 4

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

MINISTERS' BURDENS.

ELECTORAL BOUNDARIES. WELLINGTON, Feb 9. • The Order-in-Council fixing the maximum prices of wheat and flour I differs in one very material respect J from previous regulations issued under the legislation dealing with the cost of living. Hitherto the Minister of Industries and Commerce has been given the necessary authority to set the machinery of the law in motion, but in this instance the responsibility of initiating proceedings has been cast upc:i the Minister of Agriculture. As it happens, Mr. W. D. S. MacDonald, Jin addition to being Acting-Minister of Industries and Commerce, is also Minister of Agriculture and so long as he is filling the two offices the wording of the Order-in-Council will be of little consequence; but when Mr. Massey returns to the Dominion and resumes charge of the Industries and Commerce Department he will find it shorn of one of its Tnost important functions. Probably he will be glad enough, however, to be relieved of one of the numerous burdens he has taken upon himself and to allow Mr. MacDonald to J continue his persistent efforts to give effect to the Government's good intern

tions. j THE WEAKENED MINISTRY, j It seems new to be taken for grantj ed, though no definite announcement on the subject has been made, that Mr. Massey and Sir Joseph Ward will not be back in Wellington before the end of May or the beginning of June, and naturally some curiosity is being felt here as to how the Ministtry will p;ei along in the meantime. Dr. McNab's death will throw a good deal of additional work upon Ministers whose hands already are more than full, and the demands upon them are not likely to grow less during the next three or four months. If twelve Ministers were necessary to cope with the business of the country eighteen months ago, twenty would not be too many to-day, \ and yet the number has been reduced j

i to nine, and two of these are honorarI members of the Cabinet who ought not to be expected to give up the whole of ; their time to the public service. That I Sir Francis Bell and Mr. Hanan are . doing excellent work in spite of their anomalous positions everyone knows, : but it is about time the public began to realise that the circumstances be- | ing what they are Ministers cannot be at the beck and call of every individual who has a request to prefer or a 'grievance to air. i THE LIBERAL LEADERSHIP. | A more delicate, but less serious question is the Liberal leadership during Sir Joseph Ward's absence. Precedence, or seniority or whatever else distinguishes one junior Minister from

another, is not of much moment when the leader of the party is present, but ■when he is away it is quite another \ matter. Dr. McNab made an ideal locum tenens for his chief, in that he was scrupulously loyal to the spirit of the party truce and possessed the entire confidence of the leaders on the other side. There is much speculation as to his successor. If seniority is to decide the matter, as presumably it did in the case of Dr. McNab himself, the choice will fall upon Mr. G. W. Russell; but it is an open secret that either Mr. MacDonald or Mr. Myers would be more acceptable to a majority of the Cabinet, and. of course, a?

the moment the Acting-Minister of Finance is holding Sir Joseph Ward's most important portfolio. People who see significance in the fact that Mr. Russell rede with Mr. Allen and Mr. Herries ahead of his Liberal colleagues at the ceremoney in connection with Dr. McNab's funeral are straining after signs and portends. The appointment will have to be made from London.