Colonial Despatches

I have to acknowledge the receipt of a letter from Mr Hawes dated Febry 25th, acquainting me that he is desired to remind me of my letter of March 5th 1847, in which I submitted for Your Lordships consideration an application, on the part of the Hudson's Bay Company, for a grant of all the Territories belonging to the Crown which are situated to the North and West of Ruperts Land.

Mr Hawes also states that in an interview which I had with Your Lordship subsequently to that application I was informed that the proposal I had made was too extensive for Her Majesty's Government to entertain.

In the interview to which allusion is made, Your Lordship did not appear to me to express yourself so decidedly as to lead me to believe that Her Majestys Government had made up their minds on the subject, and therefore I did not consider what then fell from Your Lordship as an answer to my official letter of the 5th March. I regret this misapprehension, and shall now proceed to the consideration of that part of Mr Hawes' letter now before me, in which he says that he is directed by your Lordship to state that, if I am prepared to submit another scheme which shall be more limited and definite in its object, and yet embrace a plan for the colonization and government of Vancouver's Island, Her Majesty's Government will be ready to give their attentive and immediate consideration to such proposal.

As far as the Hudsons Bay Company are concerned, all that they would require would be the very limited grant of lands which I had in view in my letter to Your Lordship of the 7th September 1846. To such a grant Mr Hawes informed me, in his letter of 14th December 1846, Your Lordship was prepared to assent on behalf of Her Majesty's Government, provided Her Majesty's Attorney and Solicitor General should be of opinion that the acceptance of it by the Company would be consistent with their Charter.

The opinion of the Attorney and Solicitor General in the affirmative was forwarded to you on the 22d January 1847, and on the 2d February I received a letter from Mr Hawes stating that Your Lordship was then "ready to receive and consider the Draft of such a Grant as the Company would desire to receive of lands belonging to the British Crown in the Oregon Territory".

In my reply to that communication, dated March 5, and with reference to what from some casual conversations with Your Lordship I had conceived was your opinion, I proposed a grant which might appear extensive, but I did this not with the view of obtaining for the Hudsons Bay Company any advantage, for, as I have already said, they as a Company require no more for the purpose of carrying on their trade than was asked in my letter of the 7th September 1846, and assented to by Your Lordship.

When I understood that you were desirous that a part or the whole of the country recently confirmed to Great Britain should be colonized, I was induced to propose that the whole should be included in a grant to the Hudsons Bay Company, because I was persuaded that the colonization would be much more Successfully conducted under the auspices of the Company, than it could be in any other manner, as I foresaw serious difficulties should different parts of the territory be colonized under different authorities.

As to the territory lying eastward of the Rocky Mountains and between the Arctic Sea and the Company's territories, (from which it is separated by no defined or definable boundary) though its addition to the grant gives the latter a formidable appearance in point of extent, it is little better than a barren waste. It is besides inaccessible except through the Company's territories or by crossing the Rocky Mountains from the Westward.

My object in proposing this tract of country to form a part of the grant was that its annexation to Ruperts Land, held of the Crown as of the Manor of East Greenwich in free and common Soccage and not in Capite or Knights Service, would place the whole territory north of 49 the American boundary line under under one governing power, and thereby simplify any arrangements respecting any part or parcel of the same; but if Your Lordship should be still of opinion that the grant is too extensive, the Hudsons Bay Company are willing that it should be limited to the territory north of 49, bounded on the East by the Rocky Mountains, or even to Vancouver's Island alone. In fact the Company are ready and willing to give every assistance in their power to promote colonization, and in any way in which Your Lordship may be of opinion that their services can be made available towards that important object.

On that part of Mr Hawes's letter in which it is assumed that the value of the coal on Vancouvers Island will form a material consideration on the part of the Hudsons Bay Company in any negociation that may take place on this subject, I have only to observe that the Company expect no pecuniary advantage from colonizing the Territory in question. All monies received for land or minerals would be applied to purposes connected with the improvement of the country and therefore, if the grant is to be clogged with any payment to the Mother Country, the Company would be under the necessity of declining it.