No. 32

I have had the honor to receive Your Lordship's despatch
No. 23 of 16th November, forwarding one from Mr Kennedy
respecting the sale of liquor to the Indians in the Peace River
and Athabasca Districts. Your Lordship states that it will be
one of my earliest duties to consider what measures should be
adopted to check so grave an evil.

2. Mr Kennedy writes—

There exists a Law in British
Columbia (without which the Country would be uninhabitable for
white men) prohibiting the sale of liquor to Indians, and if
the Hudson Bay Company would aid, instead of opposing me, to
have a like Law passed in Vancouver Island, they would find it,
I think, sound commercial as well as a humane policy. Let this
Government be clothed with the reasonable powers I ask in the
Bill herewith, and I will undertake to stop the plague which
Sir Edmund Head has so opportunely brought under your notice.

3. It will be unnecesary for me to continue the controversy
as to whether the whiskey consumed on the Peace River is imported
by way of our Northern Rivers or manufactured at Cariboo. I
retain my first impression on this point. It is only important that I
should now state that the strength of the Government in the
Legislative Council will be used to extend the Indian Liquor
Law of the Mainland over Vancouver Island. As most of the
unofficial Members of British Columbia proper will vote on this
matter with the Government, I have every expectation that the
remedy which Mr Kennedy thinks all sufficient to cure the evil
of which Sir Edmund Head complained will be applied.