TOPICS OF TALK.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 264, 28 March 1874, Page 3

TOPICS OF TALK.

"Whateveb other commendations may attach to the New Zealand Government, they can hardly escape being distinguished aR most economical—that is, in one re»Dect —for they have their little difficulties with the lawyers •settled at tho expense of individuals. So little originality has been developed with regard to the legislation provided fur the working of New Zealand Goldfields, that resource for legal machinery has always apparently been bad to Victorian Acts. Now, the Victorian Mining Statute of '65 appears to ignore ground sluicing, Rinnply because it did not exist as a leading mining industry in that Colony —if at all. As a consequence, we find it generally believed that it is legal to construct under duly obtained licenses, head races to carry water to wash away ground, tail races to take away that washed out ground. But stop; we said '' to take away." How can that be ? for it has been given as the opinion of an eminent Judge that it is illegal to. discharge a drop of water containing sediment from the mouths of euch tail races. If this be so—-we do not say so—successive Governments have encouraged the miner by subsidising approved head races ; have, contradictorily enough, on the other hand, taxed him for ko doing, and, of course, themselves, along with him —if a Government be plural'and not singular—-

and have failed to give a legal right to make practical use of such races. Ibis is no new feature of this case of pollution. In the session of '7l tbe report of the Otago Mining Commission was laid upon the table, pointing this out very clearly. The clause we allude to as pointing out the defects of the Victorian Statute reads thus:—"The additional provisions referred to (as cessary to be introduced into a New Zealand Statute) are: Ist. To nave the miners a right to use, to a reasonable extent, unoccupied Waste lands of the Crown for the discharge of the debris arising from sluicing operations, and a provision for exonerating them from liability from necessarily fouling streams and rivers in following that mode of mining. Your Commissioners do not pretend to say that such a liability does or does not arise uuder the existing law; but, assuming that it does, it is evident that the Colony, or some large part'of it, might be suddenly paralysed by some individual setting the law in motion to stop one of its leading industries." Two successive General Government Executives—and two or three Provincial ones—have had this pointed out to them as a defect in their administration of the Goldfields. If a man lets another a right of pasturage—in short, sells something he claims to possess—he, if misrepresenting, is amenable to the law to prove, firstly, his right, which he professed to and did sell; failing which proof, he is handed over as a felon, to submit to the criminal laws applicable to his case. There is. no difference in these cases. The Government assert their right to pollute rivers and streams by leasing that asserted right to others. When that right is disputed, and the unfortunate lessee says he is attacked in the enjoyment of his right by a third party, and asks for proof or for the Government to show their title, he is turned upon—lectured, indeed—that it is not the Government's place to enter into a dispute between two parties. Certainly not the place, if the Government were not, as it is, actually one of the parties in dispute. The pith of such a statement of impartiality is strangely robbed when their own Commission of selected members distinctly pointed out, as we have shown, the double dealing they were then guilty of—iguorantly, we admit. Since June stb, 1&71, that plea of ignorance is no longer ad missable.