No. 59

I have had the honor to receive today Your despatch No. 22, of
10th April, on the subject of the financial condition of the
Colony. The Returns called for by Your Grace I shall be unable
to forward, I regret to say, by the present opportunity. They
shall follow by the next.

2. As far as I am concerned I have to repeat the statement,
that I have never appointed an Officer higher than a constable
and have no expectation of doing so during my incumbency of
Office. My duty has been simply to cut down expenditure and
many are the families I have reduced to destitution.

3. To impose additional taxation, as suggested by Your Grace,
would be simply to drive the unattached population out of the
Colony and to leave us poorer than we are now.

4. Enormous sums were spent by my predecessor in making rival
roads to the single Gold Mine of Cariboo. A staff of Public
Officers was created sufficient for a population ten times as
great as we have now. To me has fallen the melancholy task of
reducing expenditure, and I may mention incidentally that my own
Salary is upwards of eleven months in arrears and that the Bank
of British Columbia is charging me eighteen per cent interest on
an overdrawn account.

5. The reductions I propose to make will probably leave me
without an Executive Council and I shall have humbly to request
fresh Royal Instructions.