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Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1229, 6 July 1872, Page 2

About the same date as that on which the District Judge at Westport gave his decision on the case statedly the Inangahua Warden, regarding tlje law of granting and refusing applications for mining leases, the Superintendent of Nelson indited a letter to the Colonial Secretary as 1o the Provincial policy in connection with the same subject; From Westport we learnt the law, and from Nelson we now learn the policy which in the one case was ignored, and in the other case observed by the Provincial Government, or, to speak by the card, by the Superintendent. That policy has already been explained both by the Provinciul Secretary and Treasurer, but in this letter it i 3 more definitely recorded, and, when space permits, we shall quote it in its entirety, as we have already done the report of the case affecting the law of the question. His Honor's letter is addressed to the Colonial Secretary in acknowledgment of another enclosing the later and greater of the two petittona which the inhabitants of the Inangahua very recently signed. From this reply Mr Curtis discreetly and excusably omits any reference to "the question of the action of the Provincial Council and Executive Government in the management and application of Provincial revenues" — leaving that, ashe .says, "for future consideration, if the Colonial Government should think it desirable to enter upon the subject." lie -rakes care, however, to state that what the petitioners describe as an "almost incredibly large? revenue from the Inangahua district" had not in twelve months exceeded £3000, while, by the withdrawal of miners from other places, there had been a diminution of revenue elsewhere, and he adds — what, we fear, is not so observable in the Appropriation Act — that in consequence of so much having been spent by the General Government for the benefit o.f the Inangahua district, it was "imperative, in justice to other districts of the Gold Fields contributing much more largely to the revenue, that some portion at least of the remaining funds available for public

works should be allotted to them." The other districts were probably, though it is not stated, the district of Charleston, which, in consideration of its large revenue, received the half of a contemptible vote of i 250, and the district of the Upper Buller, for which, in consideration of its affording little or no revenue, a vote of £4000 was provided. Having stated bo much, yet scarcely, stated enough, His Honor proceeds to refer, as| the Government have often done, to. the primary petitions from Inangahua in re the leasing question, and. to a letter addressed previously to the Under Secretary for Public Workß on the Gold Fields. To the terms of that letter — published some time ago, if we remember rightly — he had, he says, strictly adhered. That is to say that, viewed from their standpoint, "the object of the Provincial Government has been to arrest the improper and mischievous locking up of block after block of the reefs in the hands of mere speculators in a manner equally unjust and injurious to the bona fid* capitalist and miner," and he goes on to. say that, in can /ing out that policy, " no lease has been refused except on the re commendation of the Warden, or in cases where no work had been done and the application was obviously of a purely speculative character, or in cases of repeated applications for several leases of large blocks of land by the same persons ; and in all cases of reduction of the area I applied for, the number of the applicants, the amount of work done, and the genuineness or otherwise of the. application, have been carefully taken into consideration and proportionate areas granted." Hi 3 Honor also resurrects from the Blue Books some fairly illustrative references to the subject, as contained in some Auckland reports, but he succeeded in writing his letter just in the nick of time to save himBelf the pain of quoting Judge Harvey's dictum as to the illegality of his policy, or of the means taken to carry it out ; and thereby hangs the tale, and the moral to the tale, of this vexed question of leases.