A FINAL WORD.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 79, 30 March 1912, Page 5

A FINAL WORD.

Sill JOSEPH WARD’S MESSAGE JO 1 HE PEOPLE. (Per Press Association.) W-.?jington March 2'J. The following message from the Prime Minister on his retirement has been issued:— .Fellow citizens, —To-day I lay dowr the duties and burden cf the loader chip of the Liberal party. I assumed it nearly six years ago, not without many misgivings that I could not maintain that unrivalled public record which the late Mr Seddon closed by death in tireless devotion t'o the land and people., he loved so well. As a statesman arid a leader ho left behind him no equal. Hence, it wa r . inevitable that I should suffer as his successor by contrasts and comparisons which showed his siiporib' ity. Whatever may be the ■world’c measure of his own achievements j turns mainly upon Avhether he has done his best, and whatever my shortcomings have been, I feel that I cannot unfairly ' claim to have used such abilities as I possess as well as 1 could and as industriously .as I could in the service of this country and the promotion of what I conceived to be the best interests of the great mass of "my countrymen. It is a quarter cf a century since I was elected a member of Parliament, and I became a minister of the Crown twenty-one .yeafs’ago. I rcognise that it’is given to but few men to hold Ministerial office for so long a time, and while. T lave no or, where justice ml the general welfare cf the people demand- . e l it, hesitated to limit or resist sectional or class interests, I have, as is always the case, created class enemies without always securing a corresponding support of the great inass ■of the community for whose welfare I was striving. .The most disheartening experience of leadership is that while the classes of privilege and monopoly fiercely and often effectively attack a man for all invasions of their Literests in the cause of the common weal, the great bulk of the people ha is .seeking to benefit not infrequently icgard his efforts with apathy and indifference; and so to-day on tak'-ig leave of the leadership and of all prospect of other Ministerial office, I am fully justified in saying that what levs incited against me the bitterness, misrepresentation and abuse poured upon me so overwhelmingly at the last election was mainly the uncompromising .attitude I have always taken towards the forces of oonservatism, monopoly and privilege, when and where I .have honestly felt it was ray duty to do so in the public interest. No man who traces the long scries of legislative measures winch began with Mr Ballance,- which were continued vigorously by the late Air Seddon, and which the Government of which I had the honour to be leader has passed, can deny that the whole trend and purpose of these measures has been on the side of the people, for the benefit of the people, and for the protection of the per pic against the possible oppression of the great vested interests. Mon of middle life have poor memories indeed if they cannot recall the bitter resistance, both in the Tress and Parliament, which the members oif the Opposition party offered to most of these beneficent reforms. On leaving the leadership to-day I feel a sense of pardonable pride in a survey of the Statute Book for the last five years, and that sense of, pride is heightened by a wider survey of the measures I have helped to make law during all the previous years I was a member of the Ballance and Seddon Cabinets. Amid the tumult of recent and present party conflict a man’s past public work is not unnaturally forgotten, but I believe,t.uvt when the people of Now Zealand later pass judgment upon what I have done, and earnestly sought to do, and make up the account for it and against me “nothing extenuate nor set down aught in .malice,” they will admit that my years of office have net been spent unworthily, and that I have left behind me, in the shape of administrative Acts and Legislative reforms, a lasting answer to the

calumny which has for so many months past been directed against mo, in an ever-increasing chorus, by many of those opposed to me. Those who know ,me best will at least admit that I have not spared myself in doing the work of my public offices. lam now past middle life, and from the years of early youth until to-day my life has boeiiiione of strenuous labour. The best years of this life have been given to my country, hence it is that I accept with great cheerfulness the retirement which circumstances have forced upon me. My prospective leisure comes to me the more grateful in that I am no willing desoi'tor from ray post in the field. To me, whatever my hitter critics may say, my party’s interests arc dearer than any personal advantage, and while I shall no longer have the powers and privileges of leadership I shall strive as a private member to assist in the fullest degree the party to which I have so long belonged, and which for over five years 1 have led, in all attempts that party may make to further the interests of the people of this country along the lines of safe humanitarian progress. To-day I leave leadership and office /with no sense of bitterness or resentment, and as a private member I shall continue to feel the same love for this beautiful country, the same intense interest in its progress, as I have always felt throughout the years of rny Ministerial life. My late loader went out of office into the silence of death the heroic victim of his own ,public devotion, ending that strenuous life of his as ho himself would perhaps have chosen. My exit is different, but were he living and in retirement I aim disposed to feel that he, to-day, would have shaken me ,by the tiand and cheered me with the assurance that, looking ,at my work, I had not been unworthy to succeed him, and I am gratified by the belief that those of my fellow countrymen who read this message .with fair, impartial minds, will pass upon my years of leadership an equally generous judgment.—Joseph George Ward, Wellington, March 28.