REVISION OF THE WESTLAND MINING RULES.

Grey River Argus, Volume IX, Issue 666, 26 April 1870, Page 4

REVISION OF THE WESTLAND MINING RULES.

(From the " Weekly Argus." Considerable satisfaction has been manifested during the week, in the Saltwater and New River Districts, by the course the County Chairman is pursuing in calling on all parties to suggest alterations in the present Mining Rules. It i 3 admitted on all sides that as they now exist they are crude and impracticable, and not suited to our present requirements. There is no doubt that if they are now liberally dealt with, good results will follow, but extreme care will have to be taken that the interest of both capital and labor may be conserved and not made to claßh. Every . inducement must be held out to the miners to develop our resources. When men take up ground which reqnires tunnelling, for instance, the size of the claim ought to be regulated by the length of the tunnel — not merely from the depth of the ground. Again, in taking lip a tunnel claim, protection should be given for the back ground, to prevent men from taking an undue advantage of another's labor — under the head of surplus ground to be forfeited. The present rules" are very unjust, they leave no latitude to the Warden to impose any fine, instead of forfeiting that portion of ground in which work had been done. A p&rty prospecting for two or three months, and ultimately coming on payable gold, if he marks too much ground the jumpers can take that portion on which all the work has been performed for a mere nominal sum, instead of which it would be far more equitable to impose a small fine and leave the option of choosing the ground to the original prospectors instead of, as at present, to the jumpers. In the case of prospecting areas in alluvial ground this requires a thorough revision, the distances named in the regulation being out of all proportion. It does not offer sufficient encouragement to prospecting parties. For instance, there is no provision made in it for prospecting in a higher or lower strata ; as a case in point, No Name Creek was worked about three years since, and one of the prospectors, impressed with the idea that payable gold existed in the terraces, returned from Queensland for the purpose of proving, it. The sequel is known that his theory was correct, and when application was made for the reward offered for a new gold field, an answer ■was returned that the question could not be entertained as there had been workings there previously. Now this is manifestly discouraging to any future prospectors, and ought to be at once altered, so that parties finding gold on a different level should be eligible to the same advantages as if a new field had been opened, and be entitled to a prospecting area. Again, in granting protection to roads the power of doing bo now rests with the Warden ; now this right clashes with that of the Road Board) and the matter requires alteration. The question has also been mooted of late as to the advisability of giving much larger claims in cases where great obstacles exist to their being worked. Some argue that when parties are compelled to devote three or four months preparatory to getting gold that the claims are much too small and offer no encouragement to the men to go with heavy undertakings ; that in the ground that that takes £30 or j>4o to operate the claims ought at least to be double their present size. We are glad to hear that these important questions are now being actively discussed in mining circles, and it is to be hoped they will receive due consideration when the rules are remodelled. One great point in doing so should be kept in view that of offering inducement to the miners to prospect and become attached to the country.