A MINT FOB NEW ZEALAND.

Westport Times, Volume VI, Issue 1028, 10 December 1872, Page 3

A MINT FOB NEW ZEALAND.

The Mint Committee of the House of ".Representatives, in the report brought up by them, direct attention

to the valuable information given and the documents supplied by the Deputy Masters of the Eoval Branch Mints of

Sydney and Melbourne; but find that the cost of the necessary buildings and plant required for carrying on successfully all the operations in connection with minting would be about forfcv thousand pounds (£40,000), and that

the annual expenditure required to be j*"-ccouped to the Imperial Treasury for and working expenses would be about ten thousand pounds (£10,000). The amounts paid respectively by Sydney and Melbourne are fifteen thousand and twenty thousand pounds per annum. Col, Ward, E.E., in one of his reports, states that the immediate and sensible effect of the establishment of the mint in Melbourne will be to further limit the

fluctuations in the price of gold and to sustain it throughout the year a shilling an ounce above the average price of late years. That the quantity of gold exported from New Zealand

for the year 1871 was 730,029 ounces,

valued at £2,787,520. The advantages to be gained by the country in the establisment of a branch of the Eoyal Mint in New Zealand, are the increased price in the value of gold to the extent of at least £60,000 a year, and the profits arising from charges for refining, coining, melting, and assaying. The committee strongly recommend that further enquiry should be made by the Government during the recess to ascertain whether the Imperial Government would consent to the establishment of a branch mint; and also that if such consent should be obtained, proposals of a practical character should be submitted to Parliament at its next session.

It will not be inappropriate to republish the remarks of the • Victorian Mining Journal 1 relating to the advantages connected with the opening of the branch mint in Melbourne. That journal Bays : —" An increase in the price of gold is the first and greatest advantage which will result from the opening of this institution. Hitherto banks have been enabled to make such terms as they thought proper, by mutual arrangement between themselves, relative to the price to be paid for gold. Now, miners and mining companies will be in a position to hand over their gold—should they prefer doing so—to the officer in charge of either of the sub-treasuries throughout the Colony, and will be enabled, ten days afterwards, to receive its full value in soverigns, less the mint charge of 4gd per ounce. Circumstances will of course compel many individuals and companies still to transact their business through the banks in their different localities, and thus the bank price for gold will necessarily be less that the mint price, although bankers will, for the future, require to be satisfied with much

smaller profits than they have hitherto been receiving. The mint net price for gold will be £3 17s Gd per standard ounce, the standard ounce of gold being 22 carats fine. The richest of alluvial and quartz gold varies considerable in different districts, Ballarat alluvial gold being as much in some instances, as 23 carats 8£ gr; the greater portion, however, averages 23 carats 2£ gr, which, at £3 17s 6d per ounce, would be equal to a shade over £4 3s per ounce; so that, after making allowance for dirt, or, Bpeaking more correctly, "slag," the net value of alluvial gold dust in the Ballarat district will be £4 2s per ounce, instead of £4 Os 6d, as at present paid by the different local banks."