Colonial Despatches

I have this day had the honor to receive your Grace's Despatch No 131 of the 16th June containing copy of a letter from the Board of Treasury relative to the mode of adjusting the financial questionsbetween between Her Majesty's Government and the Colony of British Columbia, and suggestions relative to certain details being provided for in the Act which I am permitted to pass to enable this Government to raise a Loan not exceeding Fifty thousand pounds (£50,000), with a view to the improvement of the communications throughout the Colony.

2. Being urgently pressed for money, forreasons reasons of which your Grace is by this time aware, and not feeling certain of receiving any further information upon the subject of the "Loan Act" than that contained in your Despatch, No 123, of the 13th May, received by me on the 2nd July, I did not, when every day is of such consequence to me to relieve me of the financial pressure now bearing upon me, deem it prudent to delay thepassage passage of the Act, which your Grace was so good as to inform me would meet with your sanction, I therefore on the 26th July passed the "Roads Loan Act 1862" and transmitted the same to your Grace, in my Despatch No 34 of the 28th July 1862.

3. The valuable information with which your Grace now furnishes me, and which clears up doubts that we entertained of the propriety of expressly providing for severalmatters matters of detail, which although in themselves highly desirable to the more simple working of the Act, yet from the perusal of other Colonial Loan Acts we feared were novel and unusual, and consequently might create delay in the allowance of the Act, and the consideration that this Despatch may reach your Grace at the same time as No 34, induces me to beg that your Grace will nottake take any steps in respect to the Act therein enclosed.

I conceive it will be desirable to repeal that Act altogether, and to pass a fresh Act embodying the provisions recommended by the Lords of the Treasury.

4. I will put the matter at once in the hands of the Attorney General, and have the Act ready for transmission by the next Mail.

5. Although I have not time by this opportunityto to do more than write this hurried Despatch, yet I cannot close it without again assuring your Grace that I will do all in my power to carry out the views of your Grace and of the Lords of the Treasury in respect of the repayments that may be considered due from the Colony, but I earnestly hope that it may be within my power to shew that the sums which I am charged with having improperly drawn have been expendedsolely solely on account of the Royal Engineers, under the immediate control and superintendence of their Commanding Officer, Colonel Moody, and that the particular sum of £10,704, occurring under the head, Roads, Bridges, and Surveys, is for the most part, if not wholly made up of items of expenditure peculiar to the Royal Engineers, and of no benefit to the Colony.

6. I beg also to mention that I have drawn no Bills onaccount account of the Royal Engineers, since the 4th April last, that the sum expended by them this year in excess of drafts on the Imperial Treasury is some £4000, that they have been paid regularly, and that I have kept the public works going by various expedients of short loans, and that I hope to continue to do so, and with your Grace's kind co-operation to bring the Colony satisfactorilyout out of her present financial embarrassment, if I can calculate with certainty upon being able to draw upon the Colonial Agents General for the amount of the Loan within six months.