No. 23

I have just seen a private letter received by one of my Under
Secretaries from you this day, which you addressed to him in the
impossibility of preparing an Official Despatch under the circumstances
in which you wrote. You allude to the massacre of a party of road
makers by the Chilicoten Indians, and describe the difficulty of
capturing the Offenders or of giving some effectual discouragement to a
repetition of such acts.

I have acquainted the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty with the
state of affairs reported in your letter, and have requested that such
measures as they consider expedient may be taken for affording you the
support and protection you desire.

At the same time it is necessary for me, while deeply regretting the
melancholy loss of life which has occurred, and the probable disastrous
consequences, to draw your serious attention to the great importance of
moderating by every means in your power the spirit of retaliation to
which such events too naturally give rise, and of confining within the
limits of justice and of sound policy, the measures of chastisement to
which you may find it necessary to have recourse. Those measures must
be guided solely by a sense of justice, and a desire to re-establish
peace and order upon a permanent basis.
I should deprecate nothing so
much as the breaking out of a War which you justly say would be very
costly, and which might lead to prolonged feelings of animosity between
the two races, that could be productive of nothing but evil and danger.