Colonial Despatches

I did not receive Your Lordship's Despatch No 22 of the 8th March until very near the close of the Legislative Session when the Council was very fully occupied by the business before it. To have laid before them then the correspondence which should have been presented to them atthe the time of its receipt by Mr Seymour, respecting the Supreme Court, would probably have caused a great deal of delay in the public work; and raised an irritating discussion from which no practical good would result, upon a subject which has now happily been set at rest by Mr Needham's removal to Trinidad. I had already communicated all the correspondence to the Executive Council; and the vexed question has almost entirely passed out of the publicmind. mind. Under those circumstances I have taken it upon myself to regard Your Lordship's request that I would lay the correspondence before the Legislative Council as not being a peremptory instruction.