No. 1

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your Despatches
of the numbers and dates noted in the Margin, * with their enclosures.

I herewith transmit the return as directed by your Circular
Despatch of the 13th of December 1854, which is a mere blank; no Laws
of quarantine having been established or considered necessary in this
Colony.

**
I observe by your Despatch No 7, of the 18th December last, that Her
Majestys Government, do not approve of the measures adopted by me with
the advice and consent of Council, for the protection of the
settlements, and that they cannot sanction or hold themselves, in any
way responsible for the outlay incurred on that account, as a charge
upon the Imperial Treasury.

This decision on the part of Her Majesty's Government, places me in
a position of peculiar difficulty, and leaves me no discretionary power,
to protect the settlements in cases of great public danger. In the
instance alluded to, the vessel chartered from the Hudsons Bay Company,
was discharged after 20 days employment in the service of the Colony,
and the expenditure on that account, amounts in all to 400.

I have been on all occasions, frugal I believe, beyond example of
the public means, and it was with the utmost reluctance, that I was
induced to incur the expenditure in question under the pressure of great
public excitement, and from the consideration, that Her Majesty's
Government would be justly dissatisfied, if the settlements suffered
through any calamity, which it was within the reach of reasonable and
ordinary means to avert.

I trust that in those circumstances Her Majesty's Government will
not allow me to become the victim of my exertions for the public
service, but will in due time provide for the payment of the expenditure
in question.

*** I observe by your Despatch No 8, that Vancouver's Island, is not
included in the Reciprocity Treaty with the United States, a
circumstance much regretted by the people of this Colony, who would have
reaped very important advantages from its coming into operation here.