Sir F. Rogers
The course proposed by
M Sargeaunt is quite right, altho', as
will presently appear, one material step more is required.
You will find that this letter illustrates one probably leading
cause of the arrears of claims which have accumulated against us
from the
Admiralty.
They have just sent us in a
![Manuscript image Manuscript image](https://hcmc.uvic.ca/~coldesp/jpg_scans/jpg_thumbnail/co_60_14/co_60_14_00114v.jpg)
long list of such arrears beginning
with a sum of £67 due since
1858. We were all puzzled to guess
what this sum of £67 could be, when most opportunely the present
minute by
M Sargeaunt has come into my hands, showing that
the subject is
Capt Gosset's passage. I will now trace the
history of the transaction.
Capt Gosset came home from Ceylon
in
May 1858 and went to
B. Columbia. The moment that he heard of
the claim, he paid it into the Treasury Chest at
Vancouver's Island,
as was duly reported by the Governor on the
22 of July 1859.
If we had taken the right course at that time, we should never have
heard of the claim again. The course which we did take was simply
to forward the Governor's despatch to the
Admiralty in a lithographed
form, without a word of explanation and without any step to get the
money paid to their credit. The Accountant General of the Navy has
therefore never received the money and hence for 2 1/2 years more
this claim has continued to trouble both Offices, without apparently
either the one or the other ever making out what it was all about.
At last in
Oct.
1861 the Agents General were ordered to pay the money
to the Paymaster General to the credit of the
Admiralty, but still the
Admiralty itself was not informed. Even now therefore this claim
might continue to harrass the two Departments for an indefinite
number of years more. What we ought to do is to tell the
Admiralty
itself on every occasion that the money is paid into the hands of
some one who can place it to the credit of the Navy.
I annex a draft of a letter of inquiry to the Agents General,
and when they answer we must write accordingly to the
Admiralty.
I also annex an answer to
the Treasury. It is a lame story and will
not redound to our credit as men of business. For of course the
money was paid into the Treasury Chest at
Columbia with a view to it's
being taken out of
the Treasury in this Country: ordering it to be
remitted by the Governor will probably entail a heavy loss of exchange
besides the probability of a great deal more correspondence before
this affair is finally closed. In fact I think it will be
better at once to write again to the Governor in the terms of a
draft which is annexed. This case has certainly not been
happily managed.