A LAST WORD.

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

A LAST WORD.

SIR JOSEPH WARD'S MESSAGE. TO THE PEOPLE. By Telegraph—Press Association. W. Ilington, Thursday. The following message from the Prim# Minister on his retirement has been issued: — Fellow citizens, I lay down the duties and burden of the leadership of the Liberal party. I assumed it nearly six years ago, not without many misgivings that I could not maintain that unrivalled public record which the late Mr. Seddon closed by death in tireless devotion to the land and people he loved so well. As a statesman and a leader he left behind him no equal. Hence, it was inevitable that I should suffer as his successor by contrasts and comparisons which showed his superiority. Whatever may be the world'? measure of his own--achievements turns mainly upon whether he has done his best, and whatever my shortcomings have been, I feel that I cannot unfairly claim to have used such abilities as I possess as well as I could and as industriously as I could in the service of this country and the promotion of what I conceived to be the best interests of the great mass of my countrymen. It is a quarter of a century since I was elected a member of Parliament, and I became a minister of the Crown twenty-one years ago. I recognise that it is given to but few men to hold Ministerial office for so long a time, and while I have never, where justice and the general welfare of the people demanded it, hesitated to limit or resist sectional or class interests, I have, as is always the case, created class enemies without always securing a corresponding support of the great mass of the community for whose welfare I was striving. The most disheartening experience of leadership is that while the classes of privilege and monopoly fiercely and often effectively attack a man for all invasions of their interests in the cause of the common weal, the great bulk of the people he is seeking to benefit not infrequently regard his efforts with apathy and indifference; and so today on taking leave of the leadership and of all prospect of other Ministerial office, I am fully justified in saying that what has incited against me the bitterness, misrepresentation and abuse poured upon me so overwhelmingly at the last election was mainly the uncompromising attitude I have always taken towards the forces of conservatism, monopoly and privilege, when and where I have honestly felt it was my duty to do |so in the public interest. No m'dn who traces the long series of legislative measures which began with Mr. Ballance. which were continued vigorously by the late Mr. Seddon, and which the Government of which I had the honor to be leader has passed, can deny that the whole trend and purpose of these measures has been on the side of the people, for the benefit of the people, and for the protection of the people against the possible oppression of the great vested interests. Men of middle life have poor memories indeed if they, cannot recall the bitter resistance, both in the Press and Parliament, which the members of the Opposition party offered to most of these beneficent reforms. On leaving the leadership to-day I feel a sense of pardonable pride in a survey of the Statute Book for'the last five years, and . that sense of pride is heightened by a wider survey of the measures I have helped to make law during all the previous years I was a member of the Ballance and Seddon Cabinets. Amid the tumult of recent and present party conflict a man's past public work is not unnaturally forgottey, but I believe that when the people of New Zealand later pass judgment upon what I have done, and earnestly sought to do, and make up ' the account for it and against me "nothing extenuate nor set down aught in malice," they will admit that my years of office have not been spent unworthily, and that I have left behind me, in the ®hape of administrative Acts and Legislative reforms, a lasting answer to the calumny which has for so many months 1 past beeij directed against me, in an ever-increasing chorus, by many of those opposed to me. Those who know me , best will at least admit that I have not spared myself in doing the work of my public offices. lam now past middle life, and from the years of early youth until to-day .my life has been one of strenuous. labor. The best years of this life have been given to my country, hence it is that I accept with great cheerfulness the retirement which circumstances have forced upon me. My prospective leisure comes to me _bhe more grateful in that I am no willing deserter from my post in the field." To me, whatever my bitter critics may say, my party's interests are dearer than any personal advantage, and while I shall no longer have the powers and privileges of leadership I shall strive as a private member to assist in the fullest degree the party to which I have so long belonged, and which for over five years I have led, in all attempts that party may make to further the interests of the people of this country along the lines of safe humanitarian progress. To-day I leave leadership and office with no sense of bitterness or resentment, _ and as a private member I shall continue to feel the same love for ' this beautiful country, the same intense interest in its progress, as I have always felt throughout the years of my Ministerial life. My late leader went out of office into the silence of death the heroic victim of' his own public devotion, ending that strenuous life of his as he himself would perhaps have chosen. My exit is different, but were he living and in retirement I am disposed to feet that ' he, to-day, would have shaken me by the hand and cheered me with the assurance that, looking at my work, I had not been unworthy to succeed him, and I am gratified by the belief that those of my fellow countrymen who read this message with fair, impartial minds, will Pass upon my years of leadership an equally generous judgment. Joseph George Ward, Wellington, March 28.