Sir F. Sandford
I am afraid there may be some little difficulty about this Salary.
When the office of Colonial Secretary became vacant &
Mr
Young was acting the
Govr was informed by the
Duke of
Buckingham "if after receiving that Report I
shd confirm
Mr Young in the acting app
t, which he now
holds he
will be entitled to full Salary from the date up to which
Mr Birch received it."
On the
11 Dec 1867 the
Govr was informed that until the
Capital question was decided
Mr Young might have as the
Govr recommended at the rate of £600 when serving in
Victoria & £800 when serving at
New Westminster.
Mr Young has all along been drawing full
Salary, in
accordance, I should suppose, with what
Govr Seymour
understood the
D. of B. to sanction. It is rather doubtful
whether he ought to have allowed this in the face of the
previous despatch tho' I think I should have done so myself.
On the
6 Oct. last Govr Seymour was informed that
Lt.
Hankin the new appointed Colonial
Secy would be entitled to
1/2 Salary from his date of embarkation.
I think on the receipt of that despatch (which was
21
Novr,
Lt H. started the 4
th)
Gov. Seymour ought
at all events to have stopped full Salary to
Mr Young, tho
he might have done so under protest—that is pending a reference home.
It is however almost, if not quite, impossible to make
Mr
Young refund any surplus of Salary he may have
recd—& I
should be
afraid that it would produce much ill feeling in the
Council, & perhaps refusal, to endeavour to procure a vote
to cover this double payment.
As far as the money goes it is only a question of about £50.
I should reply that this case is one to
wh the usual rule
will apply. That is to say that
so soon as the
Govr had
reason to suppose that an officer had been appointed in England
it was his duty to take care that
Mr Y. did not receive such
a rate of Salary as to run the risk of a double issue—and
that this should now be recovered from
Mr Y.
But that
Lord G. came to this conclusion with regret and
wd be glad to hear that the Leg
re had sanctioned the
continued receipt by
Mr Y. of his full salary up to the arrival
of
Mr Hankin.
But at any rate the fact that the
Govr had sanctioned an
improper
payment to one man furnished no reason for witholding
his due from another.
He has made the difficulty & he shd be left to get out of it.
My minute was written not observing that
Lt H. would have
left England before the news of his appt
mt reached
B.C. The
minute therefore requires qualific
n. It is not quite a
satisfactory case but the sum at issue must be very slight.
I would write that under the circumstances it appeared to
Ld
G. that under the terms of
Mr Young's appointment he was
entitled to expect that he
shd continue to receive full
pay until the
Govr of
Columbia recd notice that another
arrangement was to be made—that is to say in the present
instance till
21st Nov—that he
wd be entitled to
half pay from that period till
Mr H's arrival and
Mr H.
to the other half, and that
Mr H. wd of course be entitled
to half pay from the
21t Novr and to full pay from his arrival.
The result will be that
Lt Hankin will get some 25£ less
than he
wd "as a general rule" (reg. 104) be entitled
to receive.
Draft at once for consn.