No. 17

I have the honor to forward a correspondence addressed to Your
Lordship by Mr G.W. Cox [W.G. Cox]
late Stipendiary Magistrate of this
Colony, with a copy of a letter from Mr Cox 
to Governor Seymour requesting that the correspondence might be forwarded.

2. I have inquired carefully into this matter, in order to give Your Lordship every information in my power, and I find that
when the reductions consequent on the Union of the Colonies and
the failing state of the Revenue were made, Mr Cox as Junior
Stipendiary Magistrate, was the first among that class of
Officers whose appointment was abolished.

*

3. He was however, by letter of the 1st May, and the subject
is again enlarged upon in the letter of the 11th May (both
enclosed) offered another appointment of a less pecuniary value
certainly, but he was to retain his Commission and act as
Justice of the Peace.

4. This appointment Mr Cox declined to accept.

5. Subsequently Mr Cox received Three hundred pounds (£300),
as full compensation for loss of Office.

6. With regard to Mr Cox's claim for Salary for the Months of
June and July 1868, I do not see how such claim can be
maintained for by the Colonial Secretary's letter of 28th May
1868 he was informed that the abolition of his Office would take
place on the 31st May.

7. The case of Mr Harbor Master Cooper to which Mr Cox
refers, I scarcely think parallel.

**

He came forward, and offered to resign his
Office (an Office which had been specially created by the
Imperial Government in 1858), for a specific sum of £600, which
offer the Government of British Columbia accepted.

8. Mr Cox's case was fully, and frequently gone into, by the
late Governor in Council, and it was then clearly decided, that
the compensation made had been ample, and I have no reasons to
offer to Your Lordship for reversing that decision.

9. I am not acquainted with Mr Cox myself, but I have always
understood he proved himself an energetic and painstaking Officer.