A VOTE OF SYMPATHY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 903, 25 February 1908, Page 5

A VOTE OF SYMPATHY.

Received February 24, 11.20 p.m. CAPETOWN, February 24. At the instance of Mr Sauer, Minister of Works in the Cape Cabinet, thp South African Party has passed a vote of sympathy with Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.

"The sudden and startling illness of the Prime Minister," writes Mr Harold Speneer in the London "Daily Chronicle," "has brought prominently before the public the terrible burden of labour, 'Atlantean, immense,' that rests upon the Prime Minister of the British Empire. Of course there are two ways of taking the post. There is what may roughly be called the eighteenth century way —that of a good chairman to the Cabinet—a First Minister rather than a Prime Minister. Such a way has found favour not in remote times with such Premiers as Lord Salisbury, who, as long as he coald control the Foreign Office, was content to let heads of Departments go their own way. But Sir Henry CampbellBannerman is trying to be Prime Minister in deed as well as word —to consult and inspire all the members of his Cabinet and to lead his party in the couutry and in the House of Commons—to control policy as well as administration." "In Peel's and Russell's day," writes Mr H. W. Wilson, in the London "Daily Mail," "the Premier's work, though infinitely exhausting, was far less than it is in the twentieth century. A host of additional burdens have been heaped upon the Premier's shoulders. He is now the President of the Defence Committee of the country, and with him rests the final responsibility for the adequacy of its army and its fleet. Over and above his correspondence with the King and his fellow-Ministers, he has constantly to appear on the platform and to be present at every great function. The conclusion must be that the life of the Premier is becoming too strenuous, and imposing bur-Jens which no human being can support."