Colonial Despatches

I have the honor to transmit herewith a letter, with its enclosures, addressed to Your Grace by Messrs Cormack and Holbrook, of New Westminster, and placed in my hands unsealed to be forwarded in the regular manner according to the Rules of Her Majesty's Colonial Service.

2. I regret that Your Grace's attention should be taken upso so unprofitably, as by a perusal even of the accompanying documents, and also that my time should be diverted from matters of real importance now pressing upon me to report upon the conceptions of the gentlemen in question. Nevertheless the matter is not uninstructive as being a fair illustration of the species of misrepresentation that has obtained in respect of these Colonies, and as shewing how a few men, with an unscrupulous newspaper at their command, upon statement wholly ex parte, form their conclusions, and disseminate those conclusions not as theories of their own, but as well substantiated facts.

3. The gist of the complaint of these Gentlemen, as I understand it, is that this Government didnot not publish verbatim et literatim an Essay upon the Colony of British Columbia, which they in their capacity of two members of the Board appointed for adjudication, had pronounced to be the best of the Essays submitted, and entitled to the reward offered by the Government to induce the production of such Essays. And these gentlemen further assume that not only has the Government not published the original Essay, but that it has been greatly altered and a complexion given to it wholly at variance with the sentiments of its Author.

4. I will endeavour as shortly as possibly to report upon this complaint.

5. This Government being desirous of obtaining and diffusing informationrespecting respecting the capabilities, and resources of British Columbia, offered a premium of Fifty pounds sterling to any person who should produce an Essay that would best meet that object. A Board of three persons wholly unconnected with the Government were appointed to decide which Essay sent in merited the award. This Board consisted of the undermentioned persons:
The Revd Henry P. Wright, M.A., Archdeacon of Columbia
Mr Henry Holbrook Residents of
Mr W.E. Cormack New Westminster

Two Essays were submitted to them, one written by the Revd R.L. Brown a Clergyman of the Church of England resident at Lilloett in British Columbia, the other written by Mr A.C. Anderson, formerly of the Hudsons Bay Company'sservice service, and a resident of Vancouver's Island. The Board decided that Mr Brown's Essay was the better of the two, and that it was entitled to the Fifty pounds premium. The manuscript Essays were then returned to the Government. Both the Essays appeared to be valuable works written with much care, and containing a mass of statistical information highly useful to the intending Emigrant, but both otherwise appeared too diffuse and bulky to be sought by the intending Emigrant, and more calculated for the general reader who had no other object in view than seeking information and amusement. As Mr Brown's Essay was considered by the Board the better of the two, and as he had begged, if it were to be published that he should have the revisal of itprevious previous to publication, he was advised of the particular object the Government had in view in calling for the Essays, and was asked to undertake the condensation of his Essay to meet more closely the end intended. He readily assented, and the Manuscript of the original Essay was forwarded to him in precisely the same condition it was received from the Board of Adjudicators. He returned the Essay condensed, and it was sent unopened from the Colonial Secretary's Office to the printing Office at the Camp of the Royal Engineers at New Westminster. Mr Brown from time to time communicated with the Printer, but the Essay did not again come into the office of the Colonial Secretary until it arrived in its printed and complete state: and there is not the shadow of doubtthat that the Essay as now printed is precisely word for word as it was written by Mr Brown; and that not one word has been interpolated or one sentiment suggested by any Officer connected with the Government. I annex copy of the correspondence which passed between Mr Brown and the Colonial Secretary, and this of itself I think most completely and satisfactorily overturns the statements of Messrs Cormack and Holbrook. Mr Brown is just now I believe at Carribou, and I doubt not when he returns will declare every word and every sentiment in the printed Essay to be his, and will throw some light upon the attempts which he hints at in his letter of the 27th March were made to induce him to publish his Essay clandestinely.

6. Messrs Holbrook and Cormack publish in the British Columbian newspaper a paragraph which they assert was in the original Essay, and place it side by side with a paragraph which appears in the published Essay, and they would wish it to be inferred that changes of a similar character have been made throughout the Essay. In a letter addressed to the Editor of one of the Daily papers published in Victoria, the Arch-deacon of Columbia declares that the first time he "ever saw" the extract alleged to be taken from the original Essay "was in a leading Article of the 'British Columbian'". I forward a copy of the Archdeacon's letter here alluded to.

7. In the correspondence forwarded to Your Grace by Messrs Cormack and Holbrook will be found copies of two unofficial notes addressed by ArchdeaconWright Wright to Mr Young the Colonial Secretary, but as a copy of Mr Young's reply has been withheld, I also herewith enclose it. Your Grace will observe that Archdeacon Wright was in possession of it when he forwarded a copy of his second note to Mr Young to Messrs Holbrook and Cormack, and had Mr Young's note been published concurrently with the rest of the correspondence the whole of the charges made so recklessly against the Government by Messrs Cormack and Holbrook would have lost their plausibility and consistency. The Archdeacon himself does not explain why he in forwarding copies of his unofficial notes to Mr Young to Messrs Cormack and Holbrook suppressedMr Mr Young's reply.

8. There are many other points upon which I might animadvert, and which would serve to overturn the fabric of complaint which I must say has been very ingeniously raised, but I think I have said enough to satisfy Your Grace of the groundlessness of the allegations preferred by Messrs Holbrook and Cormack, even if the correspondence between the Colonial Secretary and Mr Brown relative to the publication of the essay does not sufficiently elucidate the whole matter.