No. 22

I have to acknowledge the receipt of your Despatch No. 40 of the
22nd December and to express the regret with which I learnt that the
late Mr. Seymour had withheld from the Legislative Council the Duke of
Buckingham's Despatch No. 40 of the 26th June 1868 respecting the then
unsatisfactory condition of the Courts of Justice in British Columbia.

I am very glad to have had it in my power to remove all the
difficulties which were then in existence by the promotion of Mr.
Needham to Trinidad and I have to request you, if you have not already
done so, to lay before the Council now the correspondence which should
have been presented to them immediately after its receipt by the late
Governor.