Colonial Despatches

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 wholeexpenses expenses of Government, Survey's, roads, Clergy, and Schools, without the imposition of any tax but that for the privilege of selling spirits.