Colonial Despatches
The colonial despatches of Vancouver Island and British Columbia 1846-1871
Correspondence (private letter)
Miller, William
to Colonial Office 5 January 1852, CO 305:3, 539.
Abstract
Correspondence (private letter).
Enclosures (untranscribed) (1), Marginalia (1).
Miller suggests to the Colonial Office that the high price of land in the British colonies
might lead to the eventual annexation of Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii by the United States.
This file encloses a copy of the San Francisco Daily Evening Picayune, which lists the current prices for goods in San Francisco.
Miller to Colonial Office
The Payment of a Pound Sterling an Acre for Land on Vancouver's Island, and other Purchase conditions, together with sundry Restrictions
imposed upon British Colonists there (and hence so few of them) appear,
in this part of the World, to be both injurious and hazardous to the
Interests of all Parties concerned, excepting only the Americans.
To the best of my recollection this condition of selling
a. 1 an acre was imposed on the HBC by Government—not wished for by
themselves.
Might it not be worth while to consider whether, if such a system
be persevered in, it would not, in the end, be likely to lead to
Vancouver's and Queen Charlottes' Islands becoming as Independent of
Great Britain as Java now is?
It seems also very doubtful, if the Proverbially, Harsh and Prying
Discipline pursued by the Hudsons' Bay Companys' Officers, and if
Contracts or Sales of considerable Tracts of Land comprising Sites of
future Commercial Towns and Ports, in favor of one Party, to the
detriment or exclusion of other Parties, can be very durable within a
Stones' throw of Yankee Equality and Yankee Enterprise not very
scrupulous in this distant Region.
American Settlers—whether Squatters
Squatters or Emigrants—cheerfully
surmount hardships, privations, and all sorts of obstacles, depending
exclusively upon their own exertions, seldom, if ever, applying to their
Consuls or other Authorities for Aid.
Squatters or Emigrants—cheerfully
surmount hardships, privations, and all sorts of obstacles, depending
exclusively upon their own exertions, seldom, if ever, applying to their
Consuls or other Authorities for Aid.
It is sadly the reverse with the greater part of British Emigrants
whose spirit of Dependency and want of Energy are too often manifest, at
all events of a large majority of such as touch at or come to the
Sandwich Islands.
The high Price of, and other difficulties in obtaining Land, and
forming Homesteads in our Colonies, destroy Enterprise and too often
engender a very bad feeling towards the Mother Country.
January the 5th 1852
Documents enclosed with the main document (not transcribed)
