Mining Law of the British Empire

Abstract

ALTHOUGH admirable treatises on mining law for the guidance of lawyers have been written by Rogers, Walmesley, McSwinney, Bainbridge, Cockburn, and numerous foreign authors, the field has by no means been exhausted; and Mr. Alford's work forms a welcome addition to technical literature. Written with conspicuous literary skill by a mining engineer of wide experience, it gives a concise summary of the various codes of mining law of the British possessions throughout the world, with well considered remarks on their characteristics. The term mining law is taken by the author to mean the enactments that regulate the acquisition and tenure of mining rights. Mining regulations, which control the methods of working mines, receive merely incidental mention. In the case of Great Britain it is true, the Mines Regulation Acts are quoted at some length as models; but even in this case no reference is made to the Amendment Act of 1903 or to the numerous special statutes, of which fourteen are cited in Sir C. Le Neve Foster's “Ore and Stone Mining,” that affect miners and workers in open pits in this country. Indeed, Mr. Alford's chapter on the mining law of Great Britain is the least striking in the book. Mining in Great Britain is so largely a matter of contract between lord and lessee, and so largely concerned with non-metallic minerals, that there is little scope for the comparative treatment of the metal-mining rights and obligations that forms so interesting a feature of the chapters dealing with colonial laws.

Mining Law of the British Empire.

By Charles J. Alford. Pp. xii + 300. (London: Charles Griffin and Co., Ltd., 1906.) Price 8s. 6d. net.