The Wanganui Chronicle, PATEA-RANGITIKEI ADVERTISER. 'NULLA DIES SINE LINEA." TUESDAY, JANUARY 23, 1894.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11920, 23 January 1894, Page 2

The Wanganui Chronicle, PATEA-RANGITIKEI ADVERTISER. 'NULLA DIES SINE LINEA." TUESDAY, JANUARY 23, 1894.

In defending the new appointments of Railway Commiseioners the New Zealand Times, the official organ of the Government, adopts an apologetic strain in referring to the gwntlemen who are practically dismissed from the railway service' of the colony. For a Government paper to talk of the high professional qualifications of men who have been dismissed is very like adding insult to injury. If there is nothing derogatory to Messrs Maxwell and Hannay in their dismissal, then they ought not to have been dismissed. If they were good men and true, and thorougly qualified for the positions they held, their Ministers should_have stood by them instead of sacrificing them to popular clamour, clamoUr too which they themselves— or at any rate the Premierhad persistently worked. The Times thinks it is good taste to let the dismissed men down lightly, and thic is how it does it:— " It is not -personally derogatory tj Messrs Maxwell and Hannay — whose ietiremont we regret for personal reasons— that thoy have betn superseded by Messrs Ronayne and Scott; any more than it was personally or professionally derogatory to them that Mr McKorrow, who had not experience, was appoint jd over tbera in 1887 to the Chief Commiss^onership. A certain public feeling existed at the earlier date, which the Government of the day considered it their duty to regard by giving the Chief Commissionership to Mr McKerrow. That feeling has increased and crystallised into a desire on the part of the majority of the electors of the colony^ for a change in the principle of the railway management. The Government have made no secret of their opinion that to facilitate this change— to which they gave shape in their Eailway Bill, the principle of which was approved at the general election — a cbanpe in the personnel of tho Railway Commissioners wbb necesEnry. Thus it is that the retirement of Messrs Maxwell and Hannay is due to circumstances in no way affecting their professional standing. It is more thoir misfortune than their fault that they have to give way to the public endorsement of the Ministerial contention that new blood is necessary before the change they are pledged to make ;n the system of management can be effected."