Title: A council of state for the empire

Author: Shaw, John Henry

In: The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 80

Publication details: Victoria University of Wellington Library, Wellington

Part of: The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout

License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand Licence

Note.

A short explanation is needed as to how the following article came to appear in its present form of a pamphlet. It was originally written as a special article and posted from Nelson to a newspaper in N.Z. on the 21st of February last. It lay quiescent in the office of that paper for no less than seven weeks, after which time I wrote enquiring and got a reply which did not seem satisfactory. In the meantime the world was moving and I felt that I was getting into a very false and unjust position. Among other things the Premier on the 10th of April at a banquet in Wellington, for the first time, so far as I know, propounded the idea of an Imperial Council. This it will be seen is just the leading idea of my article lying bewitched in the newspaper office. Mr. Seddon's first idea among his suggestions for the Conference in London was a periodical Conference of Colonial Premiers. Of course this suggestion at the banquet was a mere coincidence. But I became more dissatisfied about my enchanted article and in two telegrams claimed its return. This, after some delay was done, after eight weeks to a day, on 18th April, the editor saying that he only wanted to keep it "a few weeks "more, which I tnought was very curious. But I offered to return it if he would publish it without further delay, which he declined to do.

I then offered it after full explanation to another editor in another town, who undertook to deal with it at once. It was posted accordingly from Nelson on 24th April, and lo! the moment it entered the second office it was again bewitched. I could on writing get no account of it, and after some three weeks of further enchantment I finally got it back after two demands on the 19th of May.

Truly I am puzzled and enchanted, not knowing what to think. Let me hope that the article will now do some of the good it aimed at, and that when the Premier of N.Z. comes to deliver his views at the great Conference in London there will be a still more exact coincidence of these views with the ideas of this pamphlet. I shall then be still more enchanted.

Be it noted that neither of these editors rejected the article as a contribution, they only kept it safe bewitched as mentioned.