A FALLACIOUS ARGUMENT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9046, 4 February 1908, Page 4

A FALLACIOUS ARGUMENT.

Ministers are still publicly bolstering up their contention that the Cabinet should be strengthened by an addition or additions to its membership. The latest argument is the phenomenal death-rate of Ministers due, as is alleged, to overwork. Mr McNab says statistics would demonstrate this, but he has not attempted to produce \ facts and figures in support of his assertion. The publication of statistics of deaths woald.be of little value, unless contributing causes apart from the necessary work of office were given, and then, we fancy, they would not establish the averment of the Minister of Lands. The work of Cabinet Ministers—legitimate work, we mean —cannot approach that of British Cabinet Ministers in volume, nor can the anxieties attaching to any portfolio in our State affairs approximate those attached to Ministerial office in the British Administration; yet British Ministers seem to survive the ordeal remarkj ably well on-the whole, and when they are defeated, or retire from office, the> still carry on party campaigns with remarkablo vigour. "We are multiplying departments," says Mr McNab. The answer to that is that subtraction would be more to,the point than multiplication. Then, to simplify matters, division of labour on a more equitable basis, and attention to administrative duties at home instead of wasting time and money perpetually peregrinating the. country.- are all that should be found necessary to give our Ministers a fairly easy time, while doing justice to the various Ministerial portfolios. The reason why the Government is throwing out hints of additions to its numerical strength has already been suggested. To those who have been any way attentive to the political movements of the day, it should be obvious. It may be enlightening to the people to know, when the proposal comes to be put into concrete form, that while New Zealand has eight ministers to 900,000 inhabitants, Great Britain has but one minister to every 2,000,000 of population.