288 TlMEHRI. 
force a few months ago excited a good deal of disapproval 
in the colony, and, a vigorous but unsuccessful protest was 
made by the miners against their enactment, but it is 
significant that no attempt has been made to explain 
away the charge upon which the Commissioner of Mines 
based the necessity for a change. In his Official Report 
he asserts that in many instances the term working 
would be a misnomer if intended as a description of 
the operations in hand — system and method being often 
entirely wanting — and that a reduction in the size of 
the claims is essential to their being worked in an 
efficient and systematic manner to the advantage of ail 
concerned. It is to be admitted that the argument is a 
forcible one and in the majority of instances well founded. 
It is a curious anomaly that in no other descrip- 
tion of business in the colony, agricultural or com. 
mercial, do we find important positions of trust held by 
the class of persons in whose hands the great bulk of the 
practical management and direction of our gold industry 
lies : a circumstance which, taken together with the Gold 
Commissioner's encomium on the general probity and 
integrity of our Creole population, would make it appear 
harsh to view with too severe an eye an occasional in- 
stance of a successful prospector being laid under an 
imputation by his enriched but ungrateful partners of 
having u picked up an unconsidered trifle" of $30,000 or 
so more than his legitimate share. Audi alteram partem >' 
BRUTUS was an honourable man, and we know what 
CESAR'S wife should be : but is it quite comme il faut to 
have the lucky but illiterate gold-digger boast of tenders 
of services as bankers from members of Society whose 
motto should be noblesse oblige ? 
