No. 7

I have received your predecessor's despatch No. 14 of the 4th
ultimo accompanied by three Ordinances of the Legislature of British
Columbia including No. 9 of 1864 intituled

An Ordinance to encourage the
construction of a telegraph line connecting British Columbia with the
telegraph lines of the United States and for other purposes.

I observe that by the 5th clause of this Ordinance there is secured
to the California State Telegraph Company, for a period of twenty years
after the completion of a certain telegraph line, the exclusive right of
sending and receiving messages between any place within the Colony of
British Columbia and any other place within the territory of the United
States of America to the West of the Rocky Mountains.

From the Parliamentary Paper noted in the margin

*

of which a copy is enclosed you will learn (what, from the correspondence
between this department and Mr. Collins, respecting the construction of
a telegraph line to British Columbia across the North of Asia, which
correspondence was communicated to you on the 10th of February last, you
will already have inferred) that Her Majesty's Government are unable to
sanction the establishment of any exclusive privileges in regard to
telegraphic communication, and you cannot fail to see that the strict
enforcement of this principle is peculiarly indispensable in British
Columbia through which Her Majesty's Government may have to communicate
in very critical times and on very important matters with Her Majesty's
Naval Forces on the Pacific. It will therefore be impossible that the
5th clause of the Ordinance under consideration should be allowed to
remain in operation, and the California State Telegraph Company should
be at once so informed.

I have hesitated to recommend the immediate disallowance of this
Ordinance because it appears to me that by allowing it for the present
to remain in operation I shall facilitate those negotiations between the
Government and the Company which will be necessary to provide either for
the continuance or for the abandonment of the enterprise.

I hope that you will be able to make arrangements under which the
understanding may proceed, but it must be clearly understood that the
exclusive right of telegraphic communication can under no circumstances
be allowed, and that if the clause giving that right be not repealed I
shall have no other alternative left than that of advising Her Majesty
to disallow the whole Ordinance.