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Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2831, 12 March 1878, Page 2

Captain Goldsmith has been appointed Mining Inspector.. The gallant captain has received the Governor's Warrant confirming him in the appointment, and simultaneously the County Chairman has received a letter (published in another column) from the Minister of Lands' Department, stating that Mr Hall'i application for the appointment could not. be entertained, as the Governor hud been pleased to appoint Mr If. Goldsmith to the office. This letter is dated the 7th March. On that day we made a statement "on undoubted authority, that no such appointment had been made." We were not then at liberty to give our authority, but now that the appointment has been made, and must have been made even when we wrote, we feel bound to state that the authority on which we asserted that Captain Goldsmith had not been appointed was a telegram from a Minister of the Crown to the effect that he did not know of any such appointment being made, and we naturally concluded that as he was tli9 only Minister in Auckland he would know of such an appointment had it been made or even contemplated. It appears, however, that members of the Ministry act independently of their colleagues even in important matters, for the appointment of such an officer as Mining Inspector— in reference to which correspondence with the Government has bnn going on for some months—can scrvcely be considered as a trifling act of departmental work; and in making the appointment the Goment have acted without regard to the interests most concerned, or the advice of persons qualified by their position to say whether the choice of the Government would be judicious or otherwise.