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New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 713, 12 February 1853, Page 3

It was not to be expected that the Gold Regulations would speedily cease to be a topic of interesting discussion ; bat, at all events, our contemporary die Southern Cross has taken care that, so far as he is concerned, the question shall not speedily be set at rest. This is natural, considering the ardour with which at first ho praised the Regulations of November 27,—die extraordinary inconsistency with which (after those Regulations had been greatly relaxed by the Government) he ran into the opposite extreme of condemning them,—and the anxiety which, for reasons which none but the wilfully blind can be at a loss to discover, he now feels to make bis own share in Hie matter appear in the least unfavourable light to the public, and especially to the City constituency. Amongst the questions which have been mooted in connexion with the whole subject, the conductor the Government, of the elected members of the Provincial Council, and of the Southern Cross respectively have engaged so much attention as to induce us to offer a few additional remarks on the points thus raised. The history of the original Regulations is so recent that it is scarcely necessary to recount its leading facts. It will bo fresh in the reader’s memory that, after various reports of a Gold Discovery had obtained circulation, and after Lieutenant-Governor Wynyard himself had visited Coromandel, His Excellency invited the elected members of the Council to a’conference, in which he laid before them a plan for the management of the Gold Field which had been drawn up under the sanction of the Executive Council, but which he then presented for the consideration of the representatives of the people, with a request that they would sugyesl any alterations that might appear to them necessary or expedient. To afford every opportunity for free discussion, the Lieutenant-Governor with all the members of the Government, withdrew, and, as even the Press was excluded from the meeting, the representatives had the most complete facility for unbiassed discussion of the matter in all its bearings. The Conference between the Executive and the elected members was resumed next day, and the result of the whole was the promulgation of the November Regulations with the concurrence of all. Anything that has been since staled does not affect this primary fact, which should be constantly kept in view by those who would understand and fairly judge of the subject,—namely, that the Regulations, (license-fees and all) were issued not as, a mere act of the Government, but stamped with the sanction of every one of the elective members of the Provincial Council present at the deliberations. Now, we are far from finding fault with this conclusion, as the case then stood, considering the testimony borne by diggers themselves to the richness of the Gold Field,

and tiie force of such arguments as the necessily of making financial arrangements with Hie Natives, the inexpediency of lidding out inducements which might tempt harvest-labourers from their all-important occupations, and the privilcgeof a prolonged free permit secured to the prospectors and diggers already at work. These considerations led ns at the time to express an approbation of the Plan, —which was fortified, no doubt, by the inference which wc felt warranted in drawing, that a plan which, while it emanated from the Government, was concurred in hy a number of elected representatives—none of whom would’submit to he called a “ puppet” of the Government, and one of whom had made his inflexible hostility to the Government matter of boasting on the Hustings—Hie inference, wc say, that a Plan so harmoniously agreed upon by these several parties could scarcely lie detrimental to the public interests, Wc repeat then explicitly, wo attach no blame either to the Government or the elected members of the Provincial Council for the Regulations as adopted on the evidence at time before them. Had the plan which they agreed upon worked as prosperously as there was then reason to anticipate, they would have been fairly entitled to share in (he credit of it, and, wc presume, in (hat case there would have been no objection to acknow ledge the partnership. Put although gold has continued to be found from that day to this, yet on the whole, as matters have turned out, it appears that too large conclusions as to the immediate productiveness of the field were draw n from the facts, and Lite recent relaxation of the regulations with regard to prospecting is a sufficiently plain admission that the license system, as originally imposed, was premature. lint surely it is not in accordance with either generosity or Justice that any member of the Provincial Council should now turn round to censure the Government with being satislied with evidence which had satisfied himself. Still less is it right that a member of the Council who happens to have, in the command ol a newspaper, an advantage possessed by none of bis fellow members, and who has cither written, or sanctioned the writing in that newspaper of high-flown commendation of the Regulations again and again so long as it seemed possible to extract from them some matter for self-glorification, should, when he finds the tide of popular feeling selling the other way, employ this convenient medium to beguile the public into a notion that—whatever any one else might have done, he was the staunch and steady opponent of License Fees and every other form of restriction.

This leads us, by a step in which many of our readers can accompany us, to notice a little further the course pursued by the Southern Cross.

In our number of Saturday last wc gave a series of extracts from the file of our contemporary, showing his unqualified and con//7u/C(7approbalion of the original Regulations. Not only did he uphold the Regulations, the whole Regulations, and nothing but the Regulations of November on their first promulgation, but subsequently (in December) when murmurs against them were heard, and a correspondent in his own columns called in question their propriety, he came forward as thorough-paced defender. We shall be excused for reproducing hero a sentence or two from the long passages which w t c have already quoted from the Cross: —

“ Our correspondent, and others whom wc have heard, decry the imposition of a licensefee as precipitate because of its immediate exaction, and unjust because of its amount. Wc dissent from both of the interpretations of Hie measure. With respect to the first, (he Government had no alternative , hut to enter into immediate arrangements with the natives, in or-

der that the race, should he fully assured. * * With respect to Hie amount of the license-fee v.e can discover nothing at allunfair or illiberal in that.”

Particular attention should be paid to the Cross's declarations on the subject of prospecting. He said : “ The pioneers of (his golden discovery have been allowed a fair and liberal term to pursue their prospecting experiments and to determine the available riches of the field they are occupied in mining,”

Not merely was this our contemporary’s opinion on the general question of the liberty granted to prospectors, but, in view of the possible contingency that matters should turn out as they have done with respect to [lie immediate productiveness of the Field — or even iconc —he still was prepared to maintain that the Regulations were right. llis words should not be forgotten, — SC, on ilio other hand, it (the report of the auriferous riches of Coromandel) prove grossly exai/fjcralcd or incorrect, the imposition of a license- fee, by deterring men from the prosecution of a profitless occupation, will have proved a great colonial benefit. After this very unequivocal adhesion to the Regulations both in their principle and in their details, the Cross went on week after week without expressing the slightest change of opinion on this part of the subject, only recording every reported instance of success with inflated comments on the richness of the Gold Field. Thus our contemporary did not profit by the example which UicNew Zealander set before him in its carefully maintained lone of caution ; —for, while we, as a matter of course, gave ready insertion to every such instance that came to us with due authentication, and although we believed, and to this hour do believe , that the Gold Field will prove remunerative, we studiously guarded against all dogmatical predictions and sweeping conclusions as to the ultimate results. Meanwhile it became more and more evident that in order to give the discovery a fair chance of full development it was desirable that liberty to prospect should be given free of charge. Satisfied that this was' the prevailing opinion, and that it rested on sufficient grounds, we, in the New Zealander of the 12th of Jan., brought it forward in these words,—“ We have* before adverted to this subject, and would again call attention to the fact, which is now admitted by those most competent to judge, that if the discovery of gold is to have a fair chance of development, it is indispensable that a wider—(if possible it

should be an unlimited)—field for prospecting should be made available; and we will add that it should be opened for prospecting without the imposition of license fees , until such a measure of success was likely to be realised as would afford to the labourers wages in some degree adequate to their toils and privations.” The attention of the Reward Committee was also anxiously turned to the subject, and it was agreed to make the representation to the Lieutenant-Governor with which the public are acquainted while, as the event proved, His Excellency and the Executive Council had, without waiting for this or any similar pressure from without, themselves taken stops to effect the desired object. What was the Southern Cross doing while these movements were in progress? Absolutely nothing. At length and at last, on the Ist February,—(let the date be well observed) —he came out with a paragraph which, as it is a gem in its own way, we give entire

“ Tim Auckland Gold-Field. — Wc have for a length of lime abstained from any notice of the doings at the diggings, in the hope that some modification in the provisional arrangements, which arc now working so ruinously, might have taken place. We are informed that an alteration is to he made. We rejoice to hear it. It cannot occur 100 soon, if Hie Gold-Field is to he rendered available to the Province. We shall discuss (his question most fully in our next, being prevented from doing so in our present issue hy the unusual press of local matter.”

This, wc say, was on the first of February , being the very day on which the Gazelle was published with the amended Regulations, which bear dale the preceding day, the thirty-first of January. A desperate effort was now to be made by our contemporary to escape from his stranded position; and accordingly, by one of those “Jim Crow” evolutions of which the file of the Southern Cross presents so many notable instances, lie turns round to heap abuse on the Regulations past and present. The original Regulations, which he had formerly lauded so vehemently, arc now declared “ruinous,” “utterly subversive of the prosperity of the Gold Field,” “ premature and ill-advised” —(in the distraction of his perplexity he forgets himself so far however as in his very next number to say once more that they were “ ur//-advised' y ; and the amended Regulations arc “feeble and fallacious;” they “afford no relaxation whatever to the digger.” This he says to a community having in their hands both sets of Regulations, which show at a glance that, under the new arrangements, liberty is freely given to u dig and search fur gold,” and workers need in fact pay no license fee until they choose to do so for their own advantage, in order to secure to themselves a claim of ascertained value. He returns to his old vocation of crying “ Wolf!”—terrifying the public with ominous threalcniugs of “ great danger,” “great and manifold evils lobe apprehended” <xe. Having often misled his dupes into an unreasoning opposition to public measures, he now hopes to do it again by exciting a demand for things which, as no man knows better than himself, the Government of the Province cannot do, such as extending the concessions of the New Regulations to “ every portion of New Lister , —(the italics are his own), private and Native property alone excepted, unless with the consent of the owners,” —that is, as he really means, although he does not openly express it, for Hie local Government of New Ulster to set at dcliancc the 73rd clause of tlie now Constitution Act of Parliament. It is endless and would be useless to follow him through all the variations of his new career, particularly as no man can tell whether he may not conic out in a week or two with some still newer vagaries on the subject. But the light thinking portion of the public will nolquiclly suficrali thisclust to blind them. They will lake the history of Hie affair from its commencement as a whole. They will discriminate also between the support given at first to the Regulations by those members of the Provincial Council who, having once acceded to the Plan, have since possessed no means of influencing the matter, or communicating to the public the views which they may have formed on fuller information as to the present productiveness of the Gold Field, and our contemporary, who, with opportunities of twice a week declaring his sentiments, and more or less influencing the issues of the matter, has taken such a course as that which in this and a former article wo have painted in colours supplied by himself. We dwell upon the subject thus because we have from the first felt a strong anxiety that, if wo were to have a Gold Field with its mingled advantages and risks, its management should he so conducted as to ward off the dangers which, in this colony more than others,' might be apprehended from its working, and that the real interests ol both races should be so respected as to secure the harmony and the ultimate welfare of all. We believe that Lieutenant-Governor Wynyard has been actuated by the same desire, and we therefore feel it a public duly to expose the true character of a course unjust to ids Excellency and his Executive, and lending to sow discord, and dissatisfaction, and consequently to do grevious injury to the Province at large.