The Daily News. SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1912. THE CABINET-MAKER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 233, 30 March 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1912. THE CABINET-MAKER.

When the Israelites were set to their impossible task of making respectable bricks without straw their hearts failed them, and though history is silent pon such a point of intimate detail it is fair to assume that their productions in the matter of bricks were neither jewelled in every hole nor registered A 1 at Lloyds. The Hon. T. Mackenzie, when facing the necessity of nominating a new Cabinet, was met by a much harder problem than that of that other Cabinet-maker, who, in conjunction with his friends, the butcher and baker, was called upon to do nothing harder than to jump over a more or less ancient potato. Mr. Mackenzie must have faced his task much in the spirit of the Israelites and the result of his efforts is frankly not too convincing. He will meet Parliament with a Ministry not one single member of which has held office before. As portfolio bearers they are all novices. True, most of them have had wide municipal and Parliamentary experience, and the majority of them have held subsidiary Governmental offices, but it must surely be unique in the history of the country to find, at a grave political crisis, the Prime Minister the only member of Ministerial experience in the Administration. Mr. Mackenzie, of course, could do nothing else, for 'with the defection of practically all his late colleagues he was compelled to turn elsewhere for assistance, and to accept the best available talent. Under the circumstances, he has probably succeeded as well as it was possible to succeed. The provincial constitution of his Cabinet is not calculated to give general satisfaction in a country which, while posing as a heart-to-heart conglomeration .of units, lias still move than a poor mail's portion of parochialism in its constitution. Canterbury has four members in the new Ministry. Southland one, the West Coast of the South Island one, Taranaki one, Auckland two, and the Northern Maori district one. Otago, Wellington and Ilawke's Bay are unrepresented. This gives n total of sis Ministers for the South Island and four for the North Island, with one portfolio still to be filled. Cnsidering

the tendency of the population to work { northwards, this proportion cannot be regarded as satisfactory. Of course, in an ideal State it should be a matter of indifference if the whole of the Ministry were drawn from one province, so long as they wre the right men in the right places : it in a country where people take .■ politics very humanly this particular ■ ealism is impossible. Still, it is earl/ days to criticise the new Administration, and in common fairness it should be given a fair and untrammelled opportunity to prove itself. It is composed of men of wide experience, commercially, municipally and politically, and it will at least supply that element of "new blood" for which the Opposition has been hysterically clamoring for years. There is an'old Yorkshire proverb which says that "there's nowt can beat t' owd 'uns, hut t' young 'uns," and the new Cabinet may yet justify the homely wisdom of the adage.