Correspondence.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XVIII, Issue 59, 23 July 1859, Page 3

Correspondence.

To the Editor of the ' Kelson Examineu.' Sib — I wish to call the attention of your readers to the letter published in the Nelson Examiner of Wednesday last, and Bigned " Oswald Curtis." I read that letter with great pleasure, proving as it does, that I was correct in my statement that Mr. Curtis, at least, had not openly affirmed that the Executive had wilfully endeavoured to deceive the public. As Mr. Curtis was the mover of the resolution which embodied the censure on the Government, and as Mr. Curtis himself declares that "he gave no opitvm whatever on the motives, intentions, or wishes of the! Superintendent," I think your readers must a^cee with me that the celebrated paragraph was not * > censured by the CounoD, that is, censured been.ue (to use the editor of the Nelson Examiner's own words) " they (the words of the paragraph) were intended to convey a meaning not warranted by the facts — a meaning which excused a political mistake by casting a slur upon the conduct of others." Or, as the same paper says on May 4th : " Aud it has been pronounced such (i c., an intentional mis-statement) by a great majority of the Council." I rejoice, therefore, that in corroboration of my own chivalric denial of the Examiner's statement, Mr. Curtis has had the manliness to declare, that he, the mover of the very vote of censure, did not, in that sense, censure the paragraph ; and I believe that few, j very few of those who voted with Mr. Curtis, considered that they had so censured it. The glory and honour of having done so, must, I believe, be awarded to the editor of the Nelson Examiner. I am, moreover, truly glad that Mr. Curtis has put it in my power to apologize to him for having conceived that he had insinuated what the Nelson Examiner openly states. I do so with much pleasure, and rejoice to find that I was wrong in fancying that he could have done anything "so unwarrantable and unfair towards any public man."

With the latter part of Mr. Curtia's letter I can not coincide. He remarks that my statement, " That the present Regulations 'are inapplicable to gold leases at all,' is of little value in opposition to the fact, that both the Provincial Council and the General Assembly have adopted provisions for the issue of gold leases practically the same." But as the present Regulations do not refer to gold leases at all, except as one of a class, namely, mineral leases, and as, moreover, the most important conditions to be attached to all gold leases to be granted under the new Act have not yet been fixed, and provision only for the making of them been inserted in the Act — unless Mr. Curtis is blessed with omniscience, or rather prescience — I cannot see how he can affirm that the conditions required to be attached to mineral leases under the present Act are, or will be, practically the same as those to be hereafter formed for insertion in gold leases. As regards the assertion that the Superintendent did offer to Mr. Gibbs a lease of " an insignificant block of laud under these Regulations," I will only refer Mr. Curtis and your readers to Dr. Geeenwood's letter, a3 published in the Nelson Examiner of May 4th. Without by any means allowing that Dr. Greenwood is strictly accurate in his account of that offer of the Superintendent, it is quite evident that it was at all events only offered by Mr. Robinson as an individual member of the Executive, and that Mr. Gibbs would not allow of its being referred to that body, evidently forgetting that, supposing he had been able to get a lease under these Regulations, it still remained for the Executive to determine the amount of land to be leased, and which in Melbourne is not allowed to be over twenty acres. Moreover, it is a curious fact that it has been admitted before his Honour the Judge, that the Superintendent has not the power to grant mineral leases, and that that power belongs only to his Excellency the Governor, who it is not probable would grant such doubtful ones as those for gold mining, in the face of the opinion given on the subject by the law advisers of the Crown.

As regards my legal opinion on the 28th clause of the Gold Fields Act, I am not vain enough to lay any stress upon that, " but may merely remark, that its manifest injustice (supposing that the Government granted gold leases under the present Regulations) does not make it the less law, and a law which would not have been unjust if the Waste Land Regulations which were passed afc the same time, and which contained a clause directly affirming that they were not to apply in" any way to gold-fields, had, as was intended, long ere this, supplanted the [Regulations which still remain in force. If my opinion should prove correct, Mr. Curtis will, I dare say, give me credit for it ; and if the contrary, I shall willingly acknowledge my deficiency in legal acumen. I am, &c, J. B. Wemyss.