Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron Build-essential package error

Binary package hint: build-essential

I'm attempting to install my Wacom tablet, and in the howto, it has told me I need the package 'Build-essential'

However, as you can see below, I cannot install this package due to a dependency error.

ehrin@ES-Desk:$ sudo apt-get install build-essential
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.

Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that
the package is simply not installable and a bug report against
that package should be filed.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  build-essential: Depends: g++ (>= 4:4.1.1) but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages

Attempting to download the dependent package to resolve this, through synaptic package manager, only sends me on a wild goose chase around the following packages, all of which are somehow seemingly co-dependent of each other, but will not tag for download and install.

G++
G++-4.2-multilib
G++-4.2
GCC4.2
GCC-4.2-base
Libstdc++6-4.2-dev

and others.

Is here the possibility of a work around, or some way to install the build-essential package without these dependency errors appearing?