A SPITEFUL LETTER.

Evening Star, Issue 12871, 21 July 1906, Page 9

A SPITEFUL LETTER.

Writing on June 2 to the London ‘Daily News,’ Mr E. G. Jcllicoe had this to say of our late Premier ; —- If Mr Scddon is to be taken seriously in the bitter attack he is reported to have made at Melbourne on Friday last on the “ stupid men of Downing street” for “ indifference, supineness, and ignorance in their past action in the Pacific, notably at Hawaii, Tonga, Fiji, and Samoa,” it should be made quite clear that the person solely rosnonsible for the surrender of British richts and authority in those islands was the late Colonial Secretary, Mr Joseph Chamberlain. P>ut when that statesman left office and the Tory Government was in power, we found Mr Chamberlain’s Tariff Reform henchman ia lb* Southern Hemisphere —the same Mr Secldon—in the New Zealand Parliament, on the 21st September, 1903, delivering himself in these terms : “ I say that the late Secretary of State for the Colonies is the foremost of the statesmen of the great British Empire. He is not gone for ever. It is only for a time, and whilst we deplore the resignation and absence from office of the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, we have at all events this consolation —we look forward in hope, trusting that the time is not fa distant when he may again be Secretary of State for the Colonies. If not, all I can say is that we shall never see his like again.”—New Zealand ‘ Hansard,’ September, 1903.

I should not like to think that this same Mr Seddon was capable of trimming his sails to our Liberal and Freetrade Government.