Colonial Despatches

I have had the honor to receive Your Lordship's despatch No. 23 of 16th November, forwarding one from Mr Kennedy respecting the sale of liquor to the Indians in the PeaceRiver River and Athabasca Districts. Your Lordship states that it will be one of my earliest duties to consider what measures should be adopted to check so grave an evil.

2. Mr Kennedy writes— There exists a Law in British Columbia (without which the Country would be uninhabitable for white men) prohibiting the sale of liquor to Indians, and if the Hudson Bay Company would aid, instead of opposing me,to to have a like Law passed in Vancouver Island, they would find it, I think, sound commercial as well as a humane policy. Let this Government be clothed with the reasonable powers I ask in the Bill herewith, and I will undertake to stop the plague which Sir Edmund Head has so opportunely brought under your notice.

3. It will be unnecesary for me to continue the controversy as to whether the whiskey consumedon on the Peace River is imported by way of our Northern Rivers or manufactured at Cariboo. I retain my first impression on this point. It is only important that I should now state that the strength of the Government in the Legislative Council will be used to extend the Indian Liquor Law of the Mainland over Vancouver Island. As most of the unofficial Members of British Columbia proper will vote onthis this matter with the Government, I have every expectation that the remedy which Mr Kennedy thinks all sufficient to cure the evil of which Sir Edmund Head complained will be applied.