No. 60

I have to acknowledge the receipt of your Despatch No. 57 dated the
11th May, enclosing a Copy of a Memorial addressed to me by certain
Members of the Civil Service of British Columbia in which they ask that
in the event of the dismissal of any of them, after the Union of the
Colony with Canada, for no fault of their own but solely for Political
reasons they may still be entitled to look to Her Majesty's Government
for employment elsewhere.

You will inform the Memorialists that the Subordinate Officers who
will after the Union of British Columbia with Canada, remain in the
service of the local Provincial Administration rightly understood that I
did not intend to refer to them in the words quoted by you from My
Despatch No. 3 of the 19th January last. The case of those higher
 Officers who would be likely to lose their offices from political causes
was then under consideration, and the 9th paragraph of your Despatch of
November 17th 1870, No. 147 in which you state that

as regards the subordinate Officers in public Departments I assume that
they will continue to hold their present posts, whether the Offices to
which they belong should be transferred to the Dominion or remain under
the Administration of the local Government, subject of course to any
modification which may be found necessary, and from which no Agreement
could reasonably be expected to protect them,

to which my Despatch above quoted was a reply, expressly distinguished
from that case the case of the subordinate Officer.

The Government of the Dominion do not appear to have raised any
question as to the continued employment of these Gentlemen, and I do not
think that I should be doing a service to these Officers themselves if I
were to hold out to them any expectations of my being able to provide
them with employment in other Colonies.