Smith to Grey

In the absence of the Governor, I am directed by the Deputy
Governor and Committee, to acknowledge the receipt of Mr Under
Secretary Peel's letter of the 24th instant, in which with
reference to the proposed change of providing for a Clergyman on
Vancouver's Island, he communicates your request to be informed
what regulations respecting the Sale of Land (if any) are now in
force in Vancouver's Island besides those established by the
resolutions of the Hudson's Bay Company, passed at the time of
the Grant of the Island.

In reply thereto I am to state, that no alteration has been
made in those regulations with the exception of the condition,
that each purchaser should take out labourers in the ratio of
one to every twenty acres of land; the reason for which
alteration was explained in the Governor's letter to Sir John
Pakington dated 1st Decr 1852.

I am further directed to submit to you, that though the
Committee of the Hudson's Bay Company, have no doubt that the
Settlement of the Island would have proceeded more rapidly, had
the system of Free Grants of Land been adopted there, as in the
Oregon Territory of the United States, yet that Vancouver's
Island is, as far as they know, the only settlement with any
pretence to civilization that has met the whole 
expenses of
Government, Survey's, roads, Clergy, and Schools, without the
imposition of any tax but that for the privilege of selling spirits.