The Aelson evening Mail. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1870.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume V, Issue 38, 15 February 1870, Page 2

The Aelson evening Mail. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1870.

The correspondence relative to the Wangapeka Lands Sales has been published and, no doubt, has, by this time, been freely circulated through the country. After a careful perusal of it we have uo hesitation in saying that the General Government of the colony do not appear to have been actuated by that spirit of fairness which we should have expected to find in those whose business it is to see that the law ia strictly and impartially carried out. They seem, ou the contrary, to have entered upou this correspondence with the foregone conclusion that the Waste Lands Board had been guilty of want of caution, and ordinary care, au<J, in fact, to have pre-juiiged the ease from evidence obtained fiom persons in no way connected with, and even hostile to, the Superintendent. But our readers shall judge for themselves. The correspondence opens ! with a telegram from Mr Fox, dated 25th October, requesting that he might be provided with a full report on the subject of the sale. The Commissioner of Crown Lands telegraphed a succinct narrative of the events on the same day, and, on the 30th, sent a full and deiailed report. On the Ist November, without waiting for this report, Mr. Fox wrote to the Superintendent stating that ''circumstances attending the sale having called the attentiou of the Government to the geueral question, the opinion of the Attorney-General had been taken, which opinion was to tho effect that the precious metals do not pass by a sale of the Waste Lands containing them," and that in this particular case it was the intention of the Government to enforce the law. That such a determination was ill-judged, hasty, and mischievous, and based upon information received otherwise, than through the Provincial Government, soon became apparent, as, after the receipt of Mr. Daniell's report, giving full information with regard to the sales, and a letter of remonstrance from the Superintendent, in which he pointed out the probable result of so impolitic a course as that proposed by the Government, the Colonial Secretary wrote again to say that " under all the circumstances the Government did not consider it conducive to the public interests to enforce the right of the Crowu to the gold " in the purchased lauds, and, accordingly, that they cancelled their letter of the Ist inst., thus admitting that they had not in the first instance bestowed u,pon the subject that amount of consideration which its importance demanded. Meanwhile a passage at arms was taking place between the Attorney - General and the Superintendent, as to the rights of the Crown, in which the former defended, and the latter attempted to overthrow, the position taken up by the Law Officer, on which was grounded Mr. Fox's ill-considered letter of the let November.

In the Attorney-General's minute it is also stated that the Board had no right to sell the disputed ground as rural laud, "in the face of the Waste Lands Ac^ which express!}' provides that auriferous laud shall not be leased till offered for sale by auction at a price not less than £10 j per acre, thus clearly showing that auriferous land shall not bs sold at less than £10 per acre, and shrill always be sold by auction." To this Mr. Curtis replies that " the unconfirmed assertion of a single person, wholly unknown to the Board, does not make the land auriferous in fact, and still less in law," and that uutil the land was classed as mineral by the Board it was legally open for sale. In the same memorandum is another proof that the Government had been in communica- | tion with outsiders on the subject of the sales, and an instance of the manner in which by so doiug, they laid themselves open to the receipt of inaccurate information, for we find the Attorney-General making the following remark: — "I observe that the Commissioner says the sales only amounted to 130 acres ; this does not seem to agree with the statement in the telegram, in which the applications were for a much greater extent of country." Now, as the "extent of country" was never*even referred to in. any official telegram, it follows that the Government had been receiving, and acting upon, erroneous information, supplied by some person or persons who, we may fairly presume, were hostile to the Superintendent, and who do not appear to have been over scrupulous as to the accuracy of their statements. On the 20th November, Mr, Gisborne forwarded another memorandum by the Attoruey-General in reply to Mr. Curtis' letter commenting upon his previous minute, in which, after discussing the right of the Crown to claim the gold in the Waste Lands, h6 proceeds to state that the fact of the Bnard being williug to grant Culliford a lease of the land, as auriferous, proved that they credited his statement that it was auriferous; that the Superintendent appeared to have forgotten the ample powers given by the " Waste Lands Act" for the purpose of preventing the acquisition by private persons of auriferous laud; that the application for purchase did not prevent the withdrawal of the land even after application; and that the Waste Lands Act clearly indicated that it was the duty of the Board not to sell auriferous land under any circumstances as rural land. He then states that he views the seizure of the land by the miners iu the light of a protest against what they conceived to be an illegal disposition of the land, as they probably saw with alarm that, for the first time in New Zealand, Crown Lands known to be auriferous were being sold to speculators, instead of being thrown open to the public UDder the laws regulating miniug for gold. The memorandum concludes with the assertion that "If the Board thinks fit, it has power even now, to reserve the land for a goldfield." Our space forbids our giving Mr. Curtis' reply to this memorandum iti any but the most condensed form. He accuses the Attorney- General of indulging in a play upon words in his use of the term " auriferous," as it was not the opinion of au individual which made land " auriferous" in law, or which caused it to cease to become rural. The prompt use made by the Board on the occasion in question of the powers conferred by the Waste Lands Act, for the purpose of preventing the acquisition of auriferous land by private individuals, proved that the Superintendent had not forgotten that they were possessed by the Board. The land having been purchased at the time, and . not merely applied for, nullified the AttorneyGeneral's opinion that it might have been withdrawn even after application. The

paragraph in the minute stating that certain persons viewed with alarm auriferous lands being sold to speculators for the first time in New Zealand is characterised as singularly disingenuous, " as the AttorneyGeneral was perfectly aware when he wrote it, that, immediately . upon the Board having reasou to believe thafc the district was payably auriferous, the whole of the laud was withdrawn from sale." As to its being the first time in New Zealand^ tbe Attorney-General is reminded that a much larger quantity of land, supposed to be auriferous, was recently sold at Canterbury. The letter, in which is enclosed a copy of a resolution passed by the Waste Lands Hoard to the effect thafc they clo nofc recognise any right on the part of tbe Colonial Secretary to interfere with their action, concludes with tbe following paragraph: — "I have expressed myself with much moro freedom uponthe minute of the Attorney-General than I should otherwise have doue, because I think its general tenor is obviously rather of a political, thau a legal, character." On the 25th November Mr. Daniell telegraphed to Wellington to ask " whether in case of a prospector coming to purchase, the Government can authorise - me, as Commissioner, to refuse sale, and eugage to relieve me from possible legal consequences," to which Mr. Gisborne replied that "in tlio event of any such application for the purchase of auriferous laud coming before you ifc would be your duty to inform the Governor^ delegate under the Goldfields Act of the application, and also to call upon the Board to consider the question of reserving tbe land." Certain other telegrams follow on the subject of referring the matter to Mr. Domett ; Mr. Broad's two reports from Wangapeka, and a telegram from Mr. Gisborne in reply, stating that the survey should not be proceeded with until Mr. Domett had reported, and two letters, one from Mn Gisborne replyiug to the Superintendent's comments upon the Attoruey-General's memorandum, and Mr. Curtis' answer thereto. These two letters we shall publish iu full in a future issue. The correspondence concludes with telegrams on the subject of surveyiug the line from the digger's Mount Owen; Mr. Gisborne, at the request of Mr. Moss, instructing the Government not to proceed wifch the survey on the 27th December, aud, on the 29th, statiDg that after all, he agreed with the Superintendent that it would be necessary to do so in order to complete Mr. Domett's enquiry. Such is a short resume of the correspondence but we would strongly re* commend all of our readers to peruse it for themselves and form their own opinion upon it.