MINISTERIAL TOURS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 162, 2 April 1908, Page 6

MINISTERIAL TOURS.

•"• If '.the'pleasant" practice Wll survives of keeping, scrap-books for the preservation of odd or interesting newspaper paragraphs, an item printed in our " Local and General" column yesterday willassuredly have come under, the ■ enthusiastic scissors of the Collector..' "The Prime Minister," the paragraph-ran, "gives his record of travels during the last six_ weeks as four thousand miles. During that time he delivered 212 speeches. Sometimes he made as many as eight speeches a day. Sir Joseph, states he is satisfied, as the result of his trips,, that a knowledge of the country is essential to those" who its affairs, and : "this can, only be' gained by personal observation. He had found travelling by no means a picnic, but hard work." Without underrating the Premier's fecundity of ideas, we must take leave to doubt whether the national good achieved by his astonishing loquacity can fairly be measured by the statistics of his. orations. It is characteristic. 1 of Sir Joseph that he should make even him-' self a subject for the statistics he so' deeply loves, and characteristic, too,, that he should dwell; not, we suppose, without' some pride, upon the number of his addresses. In his most strenuous days tliei late Mr. Seddon, to whom quantity always seemed more admirable than quality, and copiousness more statesmanlike than cogency, can hardly have surpassed Sir Joseph's record. ' ' :

, Tlie most singular ■ sentence in the paragraph quoted is tliat in which the Premier states the conclusion forced upon him by his trips. They taught him, apparently, that "a knowledge of the country is essential to those wlio administer its affairs." Surely a man who delivers 212 speeches in six weeks cannot he-said to have been learning. The other day we referred to Mr. Winston Churchill's African tour _ as an example of Ministerial travelling that was really necessary. We emphasised the fact that that tour was admirable through its fundamental difference from the average Ministerial tour in New Zealand. Mr. Churchill was truly acquiring much-needed information, that otherwise would have been inaccessible; and he paid his own expenses. To our astonishment wc find that the " Lyttelton Times" lias quoted Mr. Churchill's tour as a defence of Ministerial vote-hunting in this country. " The Opposition," /ays our contemporary, " haa nbver etx-

plained very definitely its objection to tli is practice, but probably we are doing it no injustice in assuming that it would take just the same objection to a member of the British Cabinet travelling about the Empire." We cannot speak for the Opposition, but -.ve can speak for ourselves. Whatever the Opposition may or may not have said, other people, and various newspapers, including ourselves, have explained in the fullest detail the objections to the "electioneering" tours of our Ministers. We need not repeat these objections now, but our contemporary has surely overlooked the fact that the essential difference between Mr. Churchill's tour and Sir Joseph Ward's—apart from the fact that Mr. Churchill paid his own expenses—is in the fact that the Central African natives have no votes. If the natives of darkest Auckland had no votes, would the Premier have wasted his 212 speeches upon them? The ]jyttelton Times " could' hardly have chosen a more unfortunate defence of the abuse by Ministers of their travelling privileges. ■