No. 49
Downing Street
11 April 1859
Sir,
I have to acknowledge the receipt of your [VI] despatch of the 9th of February No. 4 transmitting copies of communications which have passed between you and the House of Assembly of Vancouver's Island between the 23d August and the 5th February last.
I am glad to perceive that Manuscript imageyou have directed the attention of the House to that interesting and important subject the relations of Her Majesty's Government and of the Colony to the Indian race. Proofs are unhappily still too frequent of the neglect which Indians experience when the White man obtains possession of their Country and their claims to consideration are forgotten at the moment when equity most demands that the hand of the protector should be extended to help them. In the case of the Indians of Vancouvers Island and British Columbia Her Majesty's Government earnestly wish that when the advancing requirements of Colonization press upon Lands occupied by Members of that race measures of liberality and justice may be adopted for compensating them for the surrender of the territory which they have been taught to regard as their own. Especially I would enjoin upon Manuscript imageyou, and all in authority in both Colonies, the importance of establishing Schools of an industrial as well as an educational character for the Indians, whereby they may acquire the arts of civilized life which will enable them to support themselves, and not degenerate into the mere recipients of eleemosynary relief. It is to be hoped that by such and other means, which your experience will enable you to devise, the Indians may in these, the most recent of the British Settlements, be treated in a manner worthy the beneficent rule of Our Gracious Sovereign.
I have etc.
Carnarvon
In the absense of Sir E.B. Lytton