Berens to Newcastle

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of Mr Merivale's letter of
the 23rd ulto., in which he informed me that your Grace has proposed
to the Lords Commissoners of the Treasury that a vote should be
taken this year for £25,000, in order to [that]
the application of a sum,
not exceeding that amount, to the payment on account of the sums due
by Her Majesty's Government to this Company on the surrender of
Vancouver's Island, leaving for adjustment, whenever complete
accounts shall be sent in, the further claims of the Crown, or of the
Company, on account of the local revenue on the one side, and the
expenditure on public works and establishments on the other, down to
the close of the Grant.

When I ventured to suggest, in my letter to your Grace of the 23rd
January last, that if Her Majesty's Government were not at present
prepared to call for a reconveyance of the Island, this Company would
be willing to concur in an arrangement by which the Governor should
be empowered to dispose of land, to receive the proceeds of it, and
to account for the money to the Crown, I certainly expected that Her
Majesty's Government, if it adopted the suggestion, would at the same
time have agreed to the condition which was annexed, namely, that the
whole of the advances already clearly ascertained, and long since
communicated to the Government, should be satisfied. I was the more
confident that this proposition would have been agreed to in its
integrity, because I am not aware that more complete accounts can be
furnished than those which have already been transmitted to the
Government, and which have since been examined by Mr Lewis, the
Accountant of the Emigration Board, who attended at this Office for
the purpose. If any further information on the subject should be
considered necessary, it would be convenient that I should be made
acquainted with the nature of it.

Although, however, the terms upon which I proposed that the power of
conveying land should be conferred upon the Governor of Vancouver's
Island have not been fully agreed to by your Grace, I am not
disposed, on the part of this Company, to reject your Grace's
proposition of receiving £25,000 on account of those advances, and I
am therefore prepared to receive that amount to account, and to grant
the authority to the Governor to make grants of land, on the express
understanding that the authority to dispose of land will not embrace
any of the lands belonging to, or which have been registered as
belonging to, this Company, whether they now hold them in their own
possession or have disposed of them to third parties.

*

Towards the end of his letter Mr Merivale states that your Grace is
not aware of any objection to the principle of the Company receiving
such an undertaking as is specified in my letter of January 23rd,
but that you are not certain as to what "advances, made or to be
made", the passage is intended to refer. In reply I have merely to
state that the "advances" referred to, have only been such as were
considered necessary for the purpose ot the Government of the Colony,
and that so far as is known to us, they were never made excepting on
the pressing demands of the Governor, who in some instances made use
of funds belonging to this Company which happened to be under his
control without previously consulting the Company or obtaining their
approval of the purposes for which he used them.

I had hoped that this Company would have been put in funds to meet, a
portion at least of, these additional advances from the receipts for
land disposed of by them prior to the determination of the Grant to
them of the Island, but I regret to find by a communication recently
received from the Colony, that Governor Douglas has taken possession
of those further payments and applied them for the purposes of the
Government, so that the sum expected to come to the credit of the
Government from that account will be greatly diminished.

Before closing this letter I beg to remind your Grace that the amount
claimed by this Company, for which the detailed accounts were
rendered on the 23rd ulto. is £40,289.19.9, of which your Grace
proposes to pay £25,000 to account. These advances extend over a
series of years, and I would beg leave to submit, that on the balance
which will remain after payment of the £25,000, as the delay is in
order to meet the public convenience, this Company is entitled to
charge interest at the usual rate, dating from the period at which
the accounts were rendered.

I have the honor to offer my own thanks, and those of my Colleagues,
for the communication of the Copy of Governor Douglas's despatch to
your Grace, dated December 17th 1859, and of the answer which your
Grace proposes to make to that communication.