THE NEW PREMIER.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9062, 10 April 1908, Page 5

THE NEW PREMIER.

I CABLE NEWS.

United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph Copyright.

MR ASQUITH ASSUMES J OFFICE. I I Received April 9, 9.30 p.m. / LONDON, April 9. It is officially announced that Mr Asquith's resignation as Chancellor [ of the Exchequer has been accepted, and his appointment as Premier and First Lord of the Treasury is officially annunced. The new Prime Minister is the second son of the late J. Dixon Asquith, of Croft House, Morley, Yorks, and was born at Morley on September 12th, 1852. He was elected M.P. for East Fife in July, 1886, and again in 1892. Together with the Lord Chief Justice (then Sir Charles Russell) he was engaged on behalf of the late Charles Parnell, M.P., during the Parnell Commission. In August, 1892, Mr Asquith was mover of the amendment to the Queen's Speech which led to the division that proved fatal to Lord Salisbury's Government, and when Mr Gladstone formed his Ministry he was appointed Home Secretary. At the same time he was sworn on the I Privy Council and placed on the , Ecclesiastical Commission . During the Labour disputas of 1893 he took up a consistent attitude, which commanded the approval of Parliament, and in 1894 he acted as arbitrator in the London cab strike. In 1893 he was nominated for the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow. In 1905 he was made Chancellor of the Exchequer. EXCLUSION OF ASIATICS. A WARNING. THE INDIAN PROBLEM.

Received April 9, 9.30 a.m. LONDON, April 8. Presiding at a meeting of the colonial section of the Society of Arts, at which a number of representative Australians were present, Mr Richard Jebb read a paper advocating the general adoption of the Natal (Alien Exclusion) Act in the selfgoverning colonies. The Right Hon. Alfred Lyttelton (ex-Secretary of State for the Colonies) agreed that Mr Jebb's conclusion that the self-governing colonies were irrevocably determined not to admit effective competition from Asiatics was substantially true, but proceeded to utter a grave warning. "We must be prepared for the consequences," he remarked, "when we consider what a tremendous thing it would be for the Empire if all the races of India united against the pre-, tensions of the Western nations, who practically demand a monopoly for Western people in the lands of Westerns, and their free competition on terms of absolute equality with Western peoples." He felt that though the colonies might be able to maintain that position for twenty or twenty-five years, he was doubtful whether Britain would be able to support them isdefinitely in. a policy of Asiatic exclusion. He described as pregnant Mr Jebb's suggestion that India might be compenFated with fiscal freedom. Lord Ampthill (a former Governor of Madras and temporary Viceroy of India) urged the need for an Imperial Conference on the whole subject.