FOREIGNERS IN THE GOLD FIELD.

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 716, 23 February 1853, Page 3

FOREIGNERS IN THE GOLD FIELD.

(From the Sydney “ Morning Herald.”)

We have deferred commenting upon the Act passed during the late session for regulating the management of the Gold Fields until vve had perused the minutes of evidence taken by the Select Committee to whose enquiry and consideration that measure w r as referred. The minutes have not even yet, however, made their appearance in print; but we think we ought no longer to postpone our observations upon at least one clause of the Act. We refer to the eighth, which enacts that “Persons not being subjects of the British Crown shall be liable to ticice the licence fees and royalties payable by British subjects ; and that if any alien shall obtain a licence otherwise than in accordance with the enactment contained in this clause, such licence shall be, and be deemed to be, and to have been void ah initio; and the claim or holding of such persons shall be forfeited, and shall be assigned by the Commissioner of the District to any licensed person who may give information that the licence held by such person is not in accordance herewith ; and such person shall be liable to be proceeded against under the provisions hereinafter contained as a person mining and digging for gold without a licence.”

When the Bill w r as in Committee of the whole House, considerable hesitation was expressed by some honourable members, the Colonial Secretary amongst them, as to the policy of passing this clause. Passed, nevertheless, it was, and now stands part of the law of the land. And surely it was passed without due consideration, if not in utter forgetfulness of those fundamental principles of free trade by which the earlier legislation of the session had been professedly guided, and by which the whole commercial legislation of the British Parliament has been characterised for several years past. To these principles, as seems to us, the clause is directly repugnant. Free access to our shores is given to the whole world on terms of perfect equality. The repeal of the Navigation Laws has opened our ports to the ships of°all nations, without distinction between British and foreign. Our new Tariff Act has given the like equality to the merchandise of all nations. Why should the like equality not be conceded with regard to the working of our gold mines ? Why should the foreigner, the subject of a friendly state, be a marked man in that one occupation, and in that one alone ? What good reason can be shown why he should be required to pay more than a British subject for permission to assist in developing our resources, and contributing to the general wealth of our community ? We should Tike to see these questions answered, but are at a loss to conceive how they can be answered, without controverting the doctrine which has emancipated our natigation and our commerce from all trammels of the sort.

I It would be no answer to say that California imposed a similar restriction upon persons not ciizens of the United States. In California the restriction was in perfect harmony with the commercial policy of the Union, whose Legislature has not yet seen the wisdom of putting an end to Protection. But we trust the Legislature of this British colony will rather shun than resort to llepulican Legislatures as legislative models. We have seen how the exclusive spirit has worked in the case of our trans-Pacific rival—with what jealousy, with what injustice, with what savage cruelty the subjects of t he British Crown, especially such of them as were known to have come from Australia, have been frequently treated in that democratic eldorado. It would be a policy more in keeping with the genius of English freedom to reprove the Californian example by exhibiting on our part an example just the contrary- —by placing not only American ships and American traders, but American gold-seekers also, upon a perfect equably with our own ; by showing that, while we will not permit Americans, any more than our own countrymen, to violate our laws with impunity, our laws exact no more from the American citizen than from the British subject. But we apprehend that in some Instances this objectionable clause may operate injuriously upon the Queen’s subjects as well as upon aliens. r lhc onus probandi will, we presume, lie upon the accused. An informer, coveting the productive claim of a neighbouring digger, lodges an informa lion with the Commissioner of* the District that the party is not a subject of the British Crown. How is the accused to prove that he is ? Under some circumstances the proof may be easy enough ; under others simply impossible. Upon the dominions of the British Crown the sun never sets. British subjects are of all shades of complexion, all varieties of speech. The British subject charged at the diggings with being an alien, cannot, then, repudiate the charge by appealing to the colour of his skin or to the accents of Ids tongue; there is no necessary distinction, in those or any other personal tests, between Englishmen and foreigners, especially between Englishmen and Republic Americans. Besides, whatever personal peculiarities may in general mark the Americans and other foreigners, the British subject may have resided long enough in the United States or other foreign laud to have acquired these peculiarities equaTly with natives “to the manner born.” And os it may not be in the power of the accused to prove by evidence of this kind that he is what he is, not an alien, but a true subject of Her Most Gracious Majesty, so It may happen to be not in his power to prove it by any other means, lie may have recently arrived in the colony, solitary and unknown ; or, in the course of his wanderings through our vast interior, he may have become separated from his companions, and deprived of all the circumstantial evidence of his political identity. How, we repeat, is the accused, thus situated, to prove that he is a British subject? lie cannot do so. His own word goes for nothing, or at any rate is no better than the word of the informer. It lies in the conscience of (he Commissioner to determine which of the assertions shall be believed and acted upon. He may conscientiously believe that the word of the informer, while in reality false, is true, and that the word of the accused, though in reality true, is false. And, acting upon this conscientious error, he rewards the guilty with the prize, and punishes the innocent with the pains and penalties prescribed by the letter of the law. We would humbly suggest that such a law will be “ more honoured in the breach than the observance, ” and that if the legal advisers of the Government think it possible, on a broad view of public policy, to suspend its operations during the recess, trusting to the more matured consideration of the Legislature for an act of indemnity, suspended they ought to be.