PUBLIC OPINION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9675, 18 October 1909, Page 3

PUBLIC OPINION.

♦ FROM SATURDAY'S NEWSPAPERS „^ (By Telegraph.) MR HOGG'S RETIREMENT. *rMr Hogg seems : indeed to have been constitutionally incapable of appreciating the responsibility of a Cabinet Minister, who has to consider that on ' every public occasion he is in a sense speaking for his colleagues just as much as for himself. Mr Hogg s plea that he did not know what the policy of the Government was because it had never been expounded to him, comes perilously near to a quibble. On this particular point he had had an express warning from the Prime Minister, and as a practical politician and a man of sense he ought never to have needed it. He also knew and approved the general policy of the Government, or he could never have accepted t a portfolio. We admit that he had good cause for uncertainty aa to what the present land policy of the Government may be, and we deeply regret that his indiscretion has deprived him of the chance of influencing it decisively in the right direction.^—" Evening Poet." MR HOGG. If a member of a Ministry were permitted to preach the wisdom of making a great fundamental change in the currency in opposition to the known policy of his leader, the latter wo^ld have ceased to control the business of the country. Mr Hogg is impatient of discipline. He admits the charge. " I have never had the harness adjusted to my shoulders," he boasts. A man who will not submit 'to the restraints of cooperation with his, fellows and disdains the trammels of responsibility is out of place in a Ministry, no matter how ruggedly honest he may be. — "New Zealand Times."