MINING TITLES.
TO THE EDITOR. People are complaining of the slump; of the lack of interest in our fields taken by the British investor; of the dullness of times, etc., and are laying the blame everywhere except in the right place. No doubt overflotation, fictitious values, and other kindred evils, have something to do with the present state of affairs, but the sole and primary root of our trouble is the absolute insecurity ol our titles. The best that we cau give is the 21 years' lease, whereas the foreign investor wants either a freehold or a 99 years' lease. But to the vast majority of our claims the titles are in a most unsatisfactory state, and we cannot honestly sell, except conditionally. This is undeniably the fault of the present Government, who has done more to hamper, injure, and retard the progress of the Northern goldfields, by its halting, shifting, half-and-half policy, than it can hope to remedy for a long time to come. One thing it can do, however, and that is to let us know where we stand. Whether, once we have been officially granted a right to develops mining property, that right is worth the paper it is written on, or not In effect, whether the Government can be depended upon. At present, the whole system is a farcical combination of bad faith, blundering imbecility, and criminally negligent oruelty. A man puts in an application for what he believes to be Crown land open for mining; his application is received by the Wardrn's clerk; the ground is surveyed, and the plans' passed through the Survey office; the Warden then hears the ap plication, and if no objection is raised, and all the necessary formalities have been complied' with, the title is recommended to be granted. The license then goes to Wellington, and is signed by the Minister of Mines, and vet, after the Survey Office, the Minister, and the Warden have passed the application, and in face of - the official statement of the Warden, that such licenses are indefeasible titles unless fraud can be indubitably proved up to the hilt; yet, notwithstanding all this, ,after the claims have been worked for some consider- - able time, in some cases years, and when perhaps thousands of pounds have been spent in their development, Maoris and others can come along aud claim the ground; a refund of all the gold won from it, and, ut many cases have the colossal impudence to claim (with a colour of legal right too) com< pensation for alleged damage to the ground, Surely this is the apotheosis of injustice | it is the piling of the Peliou ol criminal political ignorance on the Ossa of idiotic legislation. We are supposed to be an advanced colony; we are at times applauded for social experiments in the interests of humanity ; and yet we treat our principal industry, and those who foster it, in a manner that would be laughed t< • scorn by the most corrupt bureaucracy Russia has groaned under since the time of Peter the Great. Some means should be devised, and that quickly, to protect proapector, miner, and shareholder. A man may possibly have been out in the back country prospecting for years. He comes across a reef which promises well. Of course he puts in his pegs and lodges an application. Everything goes on swimmingly. All tha preliminaries are gone through with; hit last penny has probably been spent in primary expenses, and the very blood of hit heart has gone into the labour of developing sufficiently the one great chance he has toiled for all his life; capitalists are willing to take the matter up; he is on a fair way to a competence for the rest of his life and then — when everything seems to be all right, the poor devil is liable to be pounced on at any moment by some dog-in-the-mangcrish absentee from the district. Even if the prospector is successful in winning his case, and after expensive and worrying litigation has proved his title, capital will have taken wings, and his chances ol well-earned wealth are gone for ever. This state of affairs can only be expressed by one phrase, namely, that it is simply damnable, and something should be done to alter it. A man should be able to ascertain before the claim is granted—nay, more, before he is put to any preliminary expense of surveying, whether his title is indefeasible, and the sooner our Ministers appreciate the fact the better.—l am, etc., Share Investor.
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Bibliographic details
New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10415, 13 April 1897, Page 3
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758MINING TITLES. New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10415, 13 April 1897, Page 3
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