AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 65, 29 April 1870, Page 3

AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM.

(To the Editor of the Mount Ida Ohboniclb.) Sib, —I am extremely sorry that I cannot, compliment your correspondent " Examiner " either upon the good temper, good taste, or good logic displayed in his letter, which appeared in your last issue. So evident indeed, and so manifest is the animus which pervades his entire effusion that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to divest one's mind of the conviction that " Examiner " has lately been unsuccessful in some law suits in the Court, and desires to attribute that ill-success, not as he should have4lone to the weakness of his cases, but to ignorance or spleen on the part of the Warden and assessors. .Now, sir, let me for a moment glance at some of the wild and unsupported assertions of " Examiner," and submit them to the ordinary test of reason and truth. In the first place, the suppositious case of Cautious v. Perseverance ; was iii reality a cafce j

I brought by one M'Aulay against, not a steady "persevering" com.panv, but! the well-known hasty, quarrelsome and litigious, Kip and Tear Company, for "placing a dam across the Main Grully, and backing tailings upon MAulay's claim."" The judgment of the Court was yery properly for the plaintiff—the defendant equally properly mulcted in certain damages and expenses, the obstruction ordered to be removed, and further interference prohibited. In the next case referred to by " Examiner " (and as I wish to call things and persons by their proper names I will call Hip and Tear v. Extended) though the complaint was in a great measure similar to that in the last case, the actual cireuinstances were wholly and essentially different. In the latter case there was no dam constructed across the Main Gully, but simply a leading or wing dam, stretching sufficiently across the Main Gully at an angle calculated- to collect water for the joint purposes of guaging and working their claim, and what little tailings were kept back were thrown upon defendants' own claim, which they intended to work, and to the injury (if any) of no one but themselves. The verdict was very properly for the defence, with a suggestion from the assessors, who visited the ground, that the angle of the wing dam should be altered so as not to keep back more than the smallest possible amount of tailings. The suggestion thrown out by the assessors, and coincided in by the Warden, was immediately and willingly carried into effect by the Extended Company. I confess, sir, I fail to see any analogy between the two cases. Some people there are whom I have heard cannot, by reason of some optical defect, discriminate between colors, nor tell white from black. To that class do I consider " Examiner " to belong. The propriety of granting tail races in the Main Gully is a question into which I do not intend at present to enter; and though I may admit such granting to have been in the first instance a mistake, such tailraces have now become vested interests, with which it would be both delicate and difficult to interfere. With regard to the case Packman vT George Martin, which your correspondent chooses to designate a " sham trial," a few words of explanation may be necessary. It was, as I understand, with no ill feeling that this cause was brought into Court—the simple object being to ascertain whether private property in Goldfields towns was liable to inundation or destruction by miners without remedy or redress. The case was not, as represented by " Examiner," a Warden's Court case, but was heard before the [Resident Magistrate, and the principle affirmed that no man has a right, under any circumstances, to injure the property of another—to my idea, sir, the simple carrying out of an admitted axiom. In fact it is merely recognising the principle which the miners themselves desire to see established, viz., that their rights are unassailable. That is—that the rights, acquired under their miners' rights, are rights for any interference with which there is, should, and must be, a legal remedy. As honest men the miners cannot refuse to others—even though they be the unfortunate holders of freehold properties in Goldfield towns—the same rights which they claim for themselves. That the opinion of " Examiner" in this, as on all other questions, should differ from our present Warden is nothing new or nothing extraordinary. So it has ever bjeen, and so it will ever be to the end of the chapter. " Examiner" does not consider George Martin and Co. liablefor damage in the case alluded to. Unfortunately for "Examiner" the administrator of the law did so think j and so, until that decision bo rescinded, I must hold the fact to be established beyond all power of doubt or contravention—all the experience, ken, sagacity, and logic of "Examiner" to the contrary notwithstanding. " Examiner," however, in the latter part of his letter now under reply, declares in a manner as ludicrous "as illogical, that "cause and effect have followed hard upon the heels of each other since the days of Adam, and all the log*c of the nineteenth century cannot separate tliem." Sir, I do not wish to separate them; neither do I wish to confuse or confound them. Cause, as'a matter of course, produces effect, and cannot, therefore, .as i»ug-

geste-aby " iUaaiiu-jiy' follow upon its heels.

Whether the embankment complained of by " Examiner " is two or twenty feet high, would not make the slightest difference with regard to the flow of tailings and water from Eoach's Gully, as it is constructed on the opposite side of the Main Chilly. The accumulation of tailings in Eoach's Gully is easily accounted for by any impartial man, if he possesses one grain of common sense. It is a well known fact that the water in th- tail-races leading from the workings on the tops and sides of the hills, is charged with as much gravel as it is capable of washing down the race at an average fall of from two to six inches to the foot, and thus it is discharged into Roach's Gully, where the fall decreases to half an inch to the foot, and the water allowed to spread into innumerable small streams over the surface of the ground to the width of from fifty to one hundred feet; thus the force of the water is lost, and the tailing* naturally lodge and accumulate.

Now, Mr. Editor, I think you and every other reasonable man will agree with me that this is the natural cause of the accumulation of tailings in Roach's Gully, and not the construction of the byewash or embank- • ment by the Extended Company (limited), as asserted by the letter in your last issue by " Examiner;" and had it not been for the indomitable courage and perseverence of the Extended Company (limited) the whole of the lower part of the township would have been swamped two years ago, from the accumulation of tailings in the Main Gully by the same rule as they have accumulated in Roach's Gully. One parting word with " Examiner," and I have done; and that word has reference to his proposal for the construction of a sludge channel. Had " Examiner" circumscribed bi3 remarks to this one point, then he. and I would have been at one, though wo might have differed as to the necessity of the miners being called to contribute at all towards that object. The Government granted the right under which the miner works, arid expects to work, hia ground unfettered by annoyance, nuisance, or interference of any kind, or by any person. The same Go'vernment oifered for sale and took money for land which had been by them withdrawn from the operation of the-Gold-fields Act.. Thus miner and freeholder became, as it were, alike the children of the Government, and equally entitlod to its fostering and paternal eare and consideration.

Had " Examiner " gone more fully into the question of sludge channel*, and omitted matters pertaining to his own immediate and fancied grievance?, the public would have thought better of his principle, esteemed his motives more highly, and would not have been annoyed and insulted by bis absurd and new-fangled logic.—l am, &c,

Old Tussock:.