CABINET RECONSTRUCTION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3076, 22 December 1908, Page 4

CABINET RECONSTRUCTION.

The unusual announcement is made that, although the Prime Minister has come to a decision, apparently after consultation with his colleagues, with respect to the appointment of successors to Mr Hall-Jones and Mr M'Nab, the public will not be informed of the result for some days. The community would have no cause to be dissatisfied with this curious determination on the part of Sir Joseph Ward if the matter of the choice of new members of the Ministry were one that concerned him alone, remarks the "Gtago Daily Times." But it is not so. To him, by virtue of the high office which he holds, belonged the entire responsibility of making the selection of the members whom he should recommend to the Governor for appointment as Ministers. But a perverted conception of the rights of the public is surely involved in the assumption that the names of the new Ministers may be withheld for several days after the appointments have Deen resolved upon. It is the people of the Dominion who are chiefly interested in the per-

sonnel of the Ministry, and it is 3imply extraordinary that, for no apparent reason that is not purely personal, the Prime Minister should think them so little worthy of consideration in the matter as to postpone a public announcement respecting the selection he has made.