No. 17

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your Despatch No 1 of
the 2nd January transmitting Copy of a letter from Mr Berens
together with your Grace's reply thereto having reference to the
subject of the advance of Twenty seven thousand Dollars ($27,000.00)
by the Hudson's Bay Company for the erection of Public Buildings in
Vancouver Island.

2. My recent Despatch No 11 of the 16th Ultimo will I trust have
placed your Grace in possession of every detail in connection with
the transaction, and I therefore will confine myself in this Despatch
solely to the question of the claim now put forth by the Company to
the Ownership of the Land.

3. I must confess that it is not without some surprise that I have
perused the letter of Mr Berens, and I am convinced that the course
pursued by that gentleman must originate through want of proper and
full information in the premises.

4. During the period I have been Governor of Vancouver Island I have
always found the Hudson's Bay Company most liberal in their views,
and sparing of no reasonable expense for promoting the good of the
Colony, and in the present instance the right of the Colony to the
land sold is so clear and indisputable that I cannot but presume that
so soon as the Company become aware of the facts in connection
therewith, they will at once relinquish a claim which I feel assured
has only been advanced through misconception.

5. On the 1st January 1851 the Hudson's Bay Company acquainted
Governor Blanshard that the sum of Four thousand Pounds (£4000) would
be placed at his disposal for the erection of some of the Buildings
most urgently required, and informed him that those Buildings
"and the Lands that may be appropriated with them" were to be
held by him and his Council as Trustees
for the Colony, and further, that "the site of these Buildings
should be near the Fort (Victoria) for convenience and protection."

6. For the better information of your Grace I enclose a Copy of the
entire Despatch in which the above instructions are embodied.

7. Shortly after the receipt of these instructions Governor
Blanshard left the Colony, but a residence for the Governor was put
up before his departure, and this very building
with the land appropriated to it was that sold in May last, and
is now claimed by Mr Berens on behalf of the Hudson's Bay Company.

8. I became Governor Blanshard's immediate successor, and carried
out so far as I was able the other arrangements Contemplated by the
Hudson's Bay Company. The land appropriated to the Government House
was always regarded by me as a Government Reserve, and the Colonial
Surveyor had strict orders from me not to dispose of any part
thereof, and although no formal conveyance had been effected, yet I
did not view that circumstance at the time as a matter of any moment,
the intentions of the Hudson's Bay Company being so unmistakeable.

9. In point of fact had the Hudson's Bay Company themselves not
adopted the foregoing arrangement—an arrangement which apparently
removed all probability of cavil or dispute, it becomes a question
whether the land could not have been reserved from the first under the
Charter of Grant which prohibits the disposal by sale of any land
"which may be required for public purposes";

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but as in the interpretation of this passage it is not improbable
that some controversy might have arisen, I consider that the Hudson's
Bay Company acted very wisely and properly at the outset in laying it
down as a rule that the lands appropriated with the public Buildings
were to be held in trust for the Colony.

10. The ground upon which the claim is now advanced is I perceive
considered by Her Majesty's Government as utterly untenable; but were
it not so, I think that the information I now supply sets the
question entirely at rest so far as the public reserves are
concerned.

11. I will not fail in furnishing Your Grace, as soon as I can
obtain it, with the information you require as to the land claimed by
the Hudsons Bay Company under a title anterior to the Grant, and as
to the land acquired by them in their private capacity.