ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE. To the Editor of the New Zealander.

New Zealander, Volume 8, Issue 692, 1 December 1852, Page 2

ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE. To the Editor of the New Zealander.

Sir, —Allow me to call the attention of the public, through the columns of your paper, to some great defects in the Licences about being issued for the Gold Diggings by the Colonial Government. Without at all, at present, touching on the question of the propriety of so speedily issuing Licences at such an enormously high price, consideiing the uncertainty at present existing as to the fertility of the gold-field, I would beg to offer some remarks on what seems to have been generally overlooked, and which I along with many of the community failed to notice, until my attention was directed to the matter by a friend of mine who had been to the Colonial Secretary's Office for the purpose of obtaining a License ; and perhaps I cannot put the matter better before you than by giving you, as nearly as possible, a verbatim account of what took place at the Colonial Seci'etaxy's Office. Applicant. —l have called for a licence for golddigging. Clerk. —Very well; you can have one by paying thirty shillings. Applicant. —Cannot I get one at the diggings \ Clerk. —No; you can only get it here, m the first instance. Applicant. —Why, I think that is a hard ease, for if I get it here I may be detained by foul wind for a week before I get there, and then before I get my traps on the ground and my spot selected another week will elapse, during all this time my licence will be running on. Clerk. —Well, perhaps you had better go down and select your place, and then come back or send for a License afterwards. Applicant. —Why, that is no better, for I shall have to wait idle while my party arc consuming the rations during all that time, which may be a fortnight. Clerk.—Cin'fc help it, such are the regulations and I cannot alter them. Applicant. —Well, Sir, I wont have the License at present, so good morning, Now, Mr. Editor, there are a few other objections to which I wish to refer. The Licenses are to be made to dato from the first of each month, consequently any person applying between the Ist and 15th of any month will have to pay a whole month. Now in Sydney and Port Phillip, the Commissioner on the ground issues the Licence, dated from the (jay of obtaining the same, to the great advantage of persons coming from any other part without going through Sydney or Melbourne; besides acting upon a strict principle of equity, in charging only from the time when the diggers can, if they please, begin to woi-k. I offer these remarks, Mr, Editor, in no captious spirit, but from a desire see the business conducted on a principle of fa to ness and equity. —l am, Sir, &c., irr. s. [We unhesitatingly give the writer of the foregoing letter an opportunity of laying before the public the views entertained by himself and others on some of the details of a plan which, at present, is avowedly only "Provisional," and which, we have no doubt, the Government will be willing to mould in such shape as, after due consideration, may appear most conducive to the general welfare. Without entering on all the points touched on in our correspondent's letter, we may remark that we sec good reason for the arrangement that —for the present at least, until the relations with the Natives are in more general and complete working order —all the licenses shall in the first instance be issued at Auckland. It will operate as a salutary check on an indiscriminate rush to the diggings —perhaps by parties who may go down in the hope of evading the vigilance ot the Commissioner, and may, in the attempt to do so, trespass on Native land, and so incur a risk of collision and disturbance But we have heard it suggested —and the suggestion seems worthy of consideration —that it would be an improvement to leave the date of the licence to be filled up by the Commissioner on the spot, when the party had arrived there and was ready to commence operations. This would meet some of our correspondent's objections, without materially infringing on anything essential in regulations, our general concurrence iv which v.'c have stated in a preceding article, — Ed. N. Z.-]