Colonial Despatches

I have to acknowledge the receipt of your Despatch No. 57 dated the 11th May, enclosing a Copy of a Memorial addressed to me by certain Members of the Civil Service of British Columbia in which they ask that in the event of the dismissal of any of them, after the Union of the Colony with Canada, for no fault of their own but solely for Political reasons they may still be entitled to look to Her Majesty's Government for employment elsewhere.

You will inform the Memorialists that the Subordinate Officers who will after the Union of British Columbia with Canada, remain in the service of the local Provincial Administration rightly understood that I did not intend to refer to them in the words quoted by you from My Despatch No. 3 of the 19th January last. The case of those higher Officers who would be likely to lose their offices frompolitical political causes was then under consideration, and the 9th paragraph of your Despatch of November 17th 1870, No. 147 in which you state that as regards the subordinate Officers in public Departments I assume that they will continue to hold their present posts, whether the Offices to which they belong should be transferred to the Dominion or remain under the Administration of the local Government, subject of course to any modification which may be found necessary, and from which no Agreement could reasonably be expected to protectthem them, to which my Despatch above quoted was a reply, expressly distinguished from that case the case of the subordinate Officer.

The Government of the Dominion do not appear to have raised any question as to the continued employment of these Gentlemen, and I do not think that I should be doing a service to these Officers themselves if I were to hold out to them any expectations of my being able to provide them with employment in other Colonies.