No. 30

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your Despatches Nos.
7 and 8 of the 20th of May relating to the massacre by Indians of a road
party in Bute Inlet and your plans for the detection and punishment of
the murderers, and I have received the tidings of these murders with deep
regret.

I have noticed with especial satisfaction your anxiety to give your
proceedings a strictly legal character, and your refusal of offers of
assistance made from beyond the Colony, which might have impressed a
different character on your proceedings. I rejoice to see that you are fully alive to the consequences which
an Indian War would entail upon the Colony and I trust that you will be
especially careful not to take any measures which may convert an
isolated outrage perpetrated by a band of murderers into a tribal War.

I am sensible of the expense which is thrown upon the Colony by the
operations which you report, but I would observe that they are
undertaken exclusively in the interest of the Colony, and that the
expense is in a great measure due to the high rate of profits which the
Colonists are realizing and therefore can hardly be viewed as any matter
of complaint.

I enclose a copy of a letter from this Department to the Admiralty
relative to Naval assistance and to an expression which you used, I
believe inadvertently, in one of your semi-official letters which was
brought under the notice of their Lordships. I trust that nothing will
occur to interfere with the cordial co-operation which ought to subsist
between yourself and the Admiral on the Station.