No. 18

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your Despatch No.
126 of the 30th November enclosing Copies of a correspondence which has
passed between you and Mr. Duncan in reference to some Murders which had
been committed in the vicinity of Metlakahtla.

Your Despatch seems to me to be far from satisfactory. In the
first place I do not understand the statement in your Minute of the 14th
November that the matter "was entirely taken out of your hands," as
Admiral Hastings seems to have offered to assist your Government in
discovering the murderers, and as the Magistrates in the vicinity of
that Station must be under your orders.

But even if it were taken out of your hands it was not your duty to
acquiesce in such a proceeding, but to resume your proper relation in
regard to the Administration of the Country, and to set right what had
gone wrong.

I need hardly express my dissent from the doctrine expressed (or
alleged to have been expressed) by Mr. Blenkinsop, that the Missionaries
should be desired to confine themselves to their legitimate business and
to leave Indians to settle amongst themselves what he calls their own
drunken quarrels. I wish that the Despatch contained more evidence that
you discountenanced it.

I much regret that it is my duty to observe that the inaction of
your Government in the present instance contrasts strongly with the
stirring and expensive operations which were set on foot and which
terminated in the destruction or dispersion of an Indian Tribe when an
outrage was committed, certainly not with less provocation, on European
Subjects of Her Majesty in 1864. I need hardly remind you that Indians
who have forsaken their savage mode of life and placed themselves under
what they suppose to be the protection of British Law are as much
entitled to rely on the Government for redress of injuries which they
may have received, as any British settler.