THE GOLD FIELDS REGULATIONS.

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1437, 10 March 1873, Page 2

THE GOLD FIELDS REGULATIONS.

(to the editor.) Sir — In your issue of the 21st inst. there was published a letter signed J. C, the tallented writer of which evidently intended to confute some statements made by me in a letter published in a former issue of the Argus advocating the alteration of Clause 8, Section 10, of our Gold Field Regulations. If the writer of that letter ha 3 proved nothing else he has certainly established and made clear his title as an efficient master of the noble art of insignificant letter writing. It is rather a difficult matter to answer J. C. In the first place it is ko mean task to grapple with a gigantic intellect that is able to find a similarity between a simple question of West Coast mining and the discovery of a continent, and whose great genius enables him to construct from the vast resources of his great brain a toll-bar for Port Phillip Heads ; and secondly, J. C. has adopted, either ! from choice or necessity, such an exceedingly vague 3tyle, that replying to the same is very much like fighting with a fog. I do not pretend to guage the depths of any man's wisdom, but J. C. must indeed be erudite when he can "simply sum up" my meaning as he does, and make the result altogether different to what I had intended. Ignorance and presumption go hand in hand, but before J. C. attempts to iuform your readers the meaning of my letter he would do well to make the sense of his own a little clearer. He should bear in mind the old adage, that "A bad work is not improved by vile translation," and if he succeeds in stating his own -views of a question explicitly, it is all that will be expected by an intelligent public from a man of his mental capacity. The only passage in J. C.'s letter that bears upon the question of water rights is that in which he states that "in many instances the terrace claims which border the creek have their washdirt conveyed by shoots, &c, to the creek bed, where the 20in of water are generally sufficient to wash it." Had space permitted, I should, in my former letter, have stated this very fact in support of my side of the question. Mahomet went to the mountain because the mountain would not go to the prophet ; and miners take their washdirt to the creek because they are not allowed to take the creek to the washdirt. If the law did not compel a head of water to be left running in the creek, men working on the adjacent terraces could co-operate and bring the creek to the months of their tunnels, where in one day they could wash as much dirt as they could truck shoot, and waste in the creek in six times the same period of time. Shooting dirt into a creek is a slow and most expensive way of mining, and only very rich ground will pay for working in that way. That ground exists on the Nelson South- West Gold Fields that will repay for that kind of working, I do not deny ; but for every yard of such ground in the Grey Valley, there is a square mile of poor ground that will not pay for driving and trucking, and mi»ht be made remunerative if water could be brought upon it. There are places of .course where the physical configuration of the country prer vents the water from being raised from the creek bed, but these places the alteration of the. law would not affect. The effect of the striking out of Clause 8, Section 10, would be that where water could be easily lifted from the creek, it wouldbe made to do more work in a cheaper and more efficacious manner than the work is at present performed, and where it could not be easily lifted it would leave things exactly as they are at present. If there is no alteration needed in our milling laws, how can we account for the present depression in mining affairs 1 '■ If, to support his view of the question, J, . C. oould point out a numerous and increasing community, and a prosperous state . of general trade, I should have nothing to say., but, alas ! all the blatant verbiage that- j. C. is master of is insufficient to alter the fact that the mining industry of the West Coast i 3 in a deplorably wretched state. If the mining laws are perfect why are the great mineral resources of the country allowed to remain undeveloped ? We count our population by tens instead of thousands, because no inducement is offered to enterprise and labor, and no security given for an outlayj of capital ; yet J. C. and writers of his stamp have the cool effrontery to tell, us that things are as well as they can possibly be, and any alteration will be for the worse. : J. C. states in his letter that " while there are numbers of creeks and gullies to be -worked, the law should not 'be altered." Admitted: but where are these creeks and gullies? Years have passed since any rush of importance to a creek has taken place in the Grey Valley. The creeks and gullies being the most easily prospected parts of the country where prospected and worked first. Now we want to try terraces and flats, where, I venture to assert, ten times more gold lies undisturbed than has yet been unearthed in this part of the country ; and to do this properly the miners require every facility that can be afforded them in diverting streams of water for the purpose of prospecting and proving the existence or non-existence of gold in \ payable quantities in the large deposits of gravel that form the extensive plains of the Grey and Ahaura valleys. If J. C. could credibly inform the miners where they could find payable creeks and gullies he would confer a great benefit upon them, and more honestly deserve their thanks than he ever will by letter writing in their behalf. Controversial correspondence is not his forte. t As an orater J. C.'s rabid style of declamation might be very effective where an instantaneous and transient impression is needful, and in the bar-room or on the stump he might be the right man in the right place. But a writer needs to be more careful, and when the production of J. C.s prolific pen is quietly read over, where the bombastic nonsense can be parted from the rational facts, the latter bear to the former abnut the same proportion as the "I'ein one halfpenny worth of bread" bears to the intolerable deal of sack in the taveru bill of Shakespeare's fat knight. Of course it affords me sincere gratification to learn ''that a law that has been maintained during so many years by * majority of miners in all our col«»nie« needs very little advocacy" from J..C Whether the need of the law does nut ex-

ceed his ability to bestow must of coarse remain an open question. But not having the right to use tbe royal pronoun, I cannot discourse on our miners and our colonies in the regal manner adopted by J. C. But if that gentleman will confine himself ' to the West Coast of New Zealand, and ■is far a3 in him lies to facts, leaving Port Phillip Heads and landlord shooting out of the question, I will endeavor to prove that che law as it exists is not the unqualified success he would like the readers of the Argus to believe. If he will descend to facts and figures, and show auy particular part of the . district benefiting by . the existing law; I will undertake to point out an area of ground of equal extent, importance, and value lying utterly idle from the same cause ; and if he chooses to discuss this very important question temperately and without peraosal allusions I shall be quite willing to continue the subject from time to time. But if he continues to write in the peculiar style and spirit that pervades his epistle of the 21st, and which I have advisedly initiated on the present occasion, I shall treat his le+ters with the silence they merit. - A controversy, so-called, possesses no interest for the public and leads to no good result, and on this subject I will give J. C. one word of parting advice. If he raves in this way to ease his mind, or because he thir.ks he does himself credit by it, far be it from me to interfere. His self-respect and literary reputation are his own. But if he has adopted his abusive style from a potion that it would hurt my feelings, J beg to inform him that he is altogether mistaken, and that he would do well in future to give his arguments (if he has any), and keep bis impotent expressions of ill-feeling for those who fear him. I am, &c, Tare Man in the Back Gully.