A Retrospect Over 15 Years.

Thames Star, Volume XIII, Issue 4248, 12 August 1882, Page 4

A Retrospect Over 15 Years.

The Mining Department and the Warden's Department of the Thames goldfields of the present hour are a piece of legal machinery as thoroughly adapted to the business of the sharper and the cheat as if they had been constructed with the sole object of furthering mine swindling. So long as the working man has a mine, that mine has to be worked, or else there is the Mining Inspector and the ruinous expenses ©f the Warden's Court behind him. Bat let the same mine go into the han^s of a lot of Auckland shareholders, and what then happens? Does the Mining Inspector move in such a case ? No. Does the Warden's Court move in such a case? No fear. That would be trespassing upon the sacred and vested rights of property. In the face of the fact that at the present time the Mining Inspector is re-entering upon the ground for which leases have been granted, we have the Warden himself assuring a Bendijjo mine speculator • that the tenure of the miners upon the goldfield is a perfectly " safe" one. Now, where is the safety ? We have no hesitation whatever in saying that safety in the tenure of mining property upon this field and upon the Thames goldfield generally there is none. The Warden is a mere puppet in the hands of certain men who are well up in all the sharp practice of the, machinery of his department, and it is but necessary to point the moral of the whole thing by the condition of the Thames itself at the present hour. The Leasing Regulations ; the impossibility of obtaining'land in the district for people to settle on for so many years ; the utter uncertainty cf the. goldfields' tenure ; and the frequent maladministration of the goldfields during the last fifteen years, ought to have led long since to a recasting of the goldfields' law and to the sweeping away of machinery which has always been a mischief. If it be wrong—and we do not say that it is not wrong—to allow well-known auriferous ground to remain unworked when in the bands of men holding under miners' right, it is still more wrong to allow the same ground, when worked by scheming and fraud into the hands of those who Lave bank deposits at their command to play ducks and drakes with, to lie idle and unworked for years together. That this has been the condition of the Thames goldfield and that it is now the condition of the Thames goldfield is a fact too notorious to admit of denial. Not alone, however, has the decadence of the place been caused by the leasing system in the mines; the leasing system both as to the township and the surrounding lands has also been a potent cause in the depression which has come upon the whole district. We have had the bitter curse of a native difficulty to deal with, and of having also the Executive Government of the country jobbing in land and in mines. Between the two stools the prosperity of the country has gone to the wall, and unless the working miners themselves take a greater interest than they have yet done in the matter, there is little hope that in fifteen years more they will proprietors of more than they are at the present—an old pair of boots, a Crimean shirt, and a pair of moleskins, with a store account on the wrong side of the ledger.—Hauraki Tribune.