LETTERS FOR N.Z. ARCHIVES

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27614, 22 March 1955, Page 7

LETTERS FOR N.Z. ARCHIVES

Gift By Daughter Of W. P. Reeves

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, March 21.

Thirty-seven letters from the correspondence of William Pember Reeves, a Minister of .the Crown in the Seddon Ministry, have been received by the Prime Minister (Mr Holland) as a gift to the Dominion archives. The letters have been presented by Mrs Amber Blanco White, a daughter of Mr Reeves now living jn London.. Included in the papers are memoranda from the Governor of New Zealand at that time. Lord Ranfuriy, and from the Premier, Richard John Seddon. There are 2fc letters from Seddon to .Reeves, and..other letters from Joseph Ward antfWiUiaxn Hall-Jones, then members 6f?the Miniifryand k'Se'eSt’ of* as all the more important because surviving letters. from Seddon are rare. William Pember Reeves was Minister of Education, Labour, and Justice in the first three years of the Seddon Ministry,, and was regarded as the author of a good deal of the advanced legislation of the perfed. He was Agent-General for New Zealand in London for ten years, and after that was New Zealand’s first High Commissioner *to Britain. The Prime Minister has written to Mrs White thanking her for a gift “which will be of inestimable value to students of the period.”