Colonial Despatches

We have to acknowledge your letter of 28th ultimo, enclosing a further letter from the Hudson's Bay Company on the subject of their claim to be reimbursed the expenses incurred in searching for Coal at Fort Rupert in Vancouvers Island.

2. In our Report of 26th March last we pointed out, that this claim must depend upon the question whether, if this mine had succeeded, it was the intention of thethe Company to sell or Lease it to themselves, or in any way to hold or work it for their own advantage—or whether the proceeds would have been carried to the public Revenue, the Company receiving no more than the percentage allowed them by the Grant of 19th January 1849. This question having been put to the Company they reply, that they cannot bring evidence of an intention to carry the proceeds of the mine to the public account because as no proceeds were ever accrued the question never arose, nor do they explicitly state that any such intention existed. But they allege that the searchsearch for coal was undertaken as a means of promoting Colonization—that it had the effect of adding a number of Miners and other Emigrants to the population—and, therefore, that if they have no strictly legal right, they have an equitable claim to the liberal consideration of H.M. Government. They add that the Coal Mine at Nanaimo has hitherto been unremunerative.

3. The claim then being abandoned as a matter of right it only remains to be considered whether there are sufficient grounds in equity to require or justify its admission. This as it appears to us, must depend on the question whetherwhether the Company were bound in their capacity of owners and Governors of the Colony to find employment for Emigrants after their arrival in the Colony, and whether it was judicious to send out a class of Laborers for whom employment at their own occupation could be found only upon works undertaken by the Company. It appears to us that the answer to this question must be in the negative. The object of the Crown in handing over the colonization of Van Couvers Island to the Company was that it should be settled by a self supporting population, and the Company acting for the Crown were boundbound to regulate their selection of immigrants with reference to that object. If, as appears to have been the case, they introduced immigrants of a particular class and fitted only for a special description of labor, which they alone could provide, it must be inferred that they did so with a view to their operations as a Commerical Company, not to their obligations as Colonizers and owners of the Island. And considering that they had already an unremunerative Coal Mine at Nanaimo and that there was no reasonable prospect of any immediate increase in thethe demand for Coal we can hardly think that the introduction of so large a number of Miners was judicious.

4. Upon the whole, therefore, we are compelled to express our opinion that the Hudsons Bay Company are not entitled in equity to be repaid the amount claimed on account of the works at Fort Rupert.