Murdoch to Rogers (Permanent Under-Secretary)

I have to acknowledge your letter of 22nd instant, enclosing the copy
of a Despatch from the Governor of Vancouvers Island, with a
correspondence which had passed between his Secretary and the
Hudsons Bay Co relative to the reservation of certain Water frontage
in the Town of Victoria for a Government Wharf and Harbour Masters
Office.

2. The Hudsons Bay Co, as is known, claim the greater part, if not
the whole, of the site on which the Town of Victoria stands, as the
property of the Company by reason of occupation prior to the grant of
the Island of 13th Jan[ua]ry 1849. As they were selling their Water
frontage to private purchasers, the Governor applied to them to
reserve a plot suitable for a landing place and Harbour Masters
Office, offering to repay their actual outlay in the purchase and
improvement of the land. The Agent of the Company declined to accede
to this application but offered to build an office for the Harbour
Master for a moderate rent, and to grant him the free use of the
Company's Wharf. The Governor in reply pointed out the insufficiency
of such an arrangement, and recalled the attention of the Agent to
the instructions of the Governor of the Company of May 1851, that
reserves required for public purposes should be resumable, upon
repayment of the price and expenses. To this letter no answer had
been received when the Governors Despatch was written, but the
Governor anticipates that it would have no effect on the decision
of the Agent.

3. The first step, as it appears to me, would be to communicate this
correspondence to the Hudsons Bay Co in this Country, and to invite
them to issue such instructions to their Agent as may secure the
necessary reservations of water frontage for the public use. Unless
they are prepared to repudiate the principle laid down in the
instruction from the Governor of the Co to Governor Douglas of 23rd
May 1851 (a copy of which will be found in Governor Douglas' despatch
of 7th December last) they cannot refuse to make such a reservation.
But if they refuse, it may be a question whether the Governor should
not be instructed to give notice to purchasers, that the grant of the
13th Jan[ua]ry 1849 excepts from the land which the Company are at
liberty to sell, as representing the Crown, all land required for
public purposes—that as regards their claim to hold and dispose of
this land as their private property the Crown denies that claim—that
the claim is now under investigation before the Judicial Committee of
the Privy Council and that if the Judicial Committee should decide
against the Company the Crown will not recognize the sales which they
may make of this Land—and that purchasers, therefore, after this
notice, will have no right to complain if they should eventually find
themselves deprived of the Land which they may have bought from the
Co. I cannot doubt that such a notice if it did not prevent the
Company offering the land for sale, would prevent individuals from
buying it. Such a proceeding is of course an extreme measure—but as
the law in the Colony does not, I presume, afford the means which
would exist in this Country of arresting these sales, I see no other
way, if the Company support their Agent, of preventing an alienation
of property which may be permanently injurious to public interests.

4. It is hardly necessary to add that this question shows, even more
strongly than the similar questions which have heretofore been
submitted for the Duke of Newcastles consideration, the inconvenience
of the present uncertainty as to the claims of the Hudsons Bay Co in
Vancouver Island. The extent which they claimed as their private
property in the neighbourhood of Victoria was 3084 Acres, and if I
understand the Governors despatch right, they have sold all of this
except about 300 Acres. Their recent sales of Town lots have been at
the rate of upwards of £9000 an Acre, and they still retain 60 Lots
which if sold at the same rate would produce nearly £11,000. For
these sums the Company will of course have to account if the decision
of the Judicial Committee should be against them—but it is very
undesirable in the meantime that land of such great value should be
disposed of solely with reference to the pecuniary profit to be made
out of it, and without regard to the public interests, present and
future, involved in its disposal.