Colonial Despatches

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your despatch No. 5 of the 21st of December enclosing a printed pamphlet, with other documents, containing observations by the Chamber of Commerce of Victoria on the statements made by you in your despatch of the 21st of March 1865.

I have to request that you will inform the Chamber of Commerce that I do not think it necessary or advisable to enter into or prolong a controversy upon the contents of a despatch written two years ago under circumstances entirely different from those of the present time, and upon a subject on which no practical question of administration now depends.

I indulge a hope that before long any feelings of rivalry between different sections of the Colony will disappear, and that all parties will cheerfully give that cooperation which is so necessary to the reputation and welfare of their country, in developing the appropriate resources of each part of the united Colony.