Lugard to Rogers (Permanent Under-Secretary)

I have laid before the Secretary of State for War your
letter of the 15 Instant with its enclosures from the Governor
of British Columbia relative to an application from Serjeant
McColl of the Royal Engineers for the remission of the whole
or part of the Sum (£105) charged for the conveyance of his
wife and children from this country to that Colony.

In reply I am to request that you will remind the Duke
of Newcastle that when the detachment of Royal Engineers
first proceeded to the Colony in 1858, accommodation was,
at the instance of the Secretary of State for the Colonies,
provided in the Transport for 35 women with their children,
being considerably in excess of the regulated number. It
may be true, as urged by Serjeant McColl, that had it not been
[for] the state of his wife's health at the time, she would have
accompanied him. But this in itself affords no sufficient
ground for a compliance with the present request; for had
Mrs McColl and her children been taken out free, it
could only have been to the exclusion of the family of some other man.

It appears however that the expenses of the passage of
Mrs McColl and her children and the two other women
who accompanied them were paid over to the Emigration
Commissioners, by whom the service was conducted, by the
Paymaster General acting, not on behalf of this department,
but on behalf of the Treasury.

The remission of the balance of the debt due by
Serjeant McColl is therefore rather a matter for the
consideration of the Duke of Newcastle in concert with
the Lords Commissoners of the Treasury.