Colonial Despatches

I have to acknowledge Mr Elliot's Letter of the 6th instant, enclosing the copy of a Despatch from the Governor of Vancouvers Island on the subject of the settlement of the Land claims at Victoria of the Hudsons Bay Company.

2. This Despatch contains no new matter nor raises any new point. Its object is to disclaim(in (in reference to a remark contained in the Duke of Newcastles Despatch of the 14th of May last) any desire of raising unnecessary controversies with the Company's Local Officer or of conducting his correspondence with them in other than a liberal and conciliatory spirit—and to enforce, on two points, the views he had expressed in his previous Despatch of the 20th of April last.

3. In that Despatch Governor Douglas proposes as a final settlement of the questions in dispute between the Crown and the Companythat that the Crown, on the one hand, should give up a lot of land at the foot of Fort Street assigned to it by the agreement of February 1862, and that the Company, on the other hand, should surrender to the Crown a lot of land at the foot of Broughton Street, a portion of the Government reserve marked 2 on the plan prepared by Mr McTavish, and also 3 Town lots Nos 1603, 1605 and 1607. The proposal was accordingly made to the Hudson's Bay Company and was accepted by them in Mr Beren's Letter to the Duke of Newcastle of the 1st of August last subject to therights rights of third parties, if any, to whom the lots in question may have been already conveyed.

4. This result was unknown to Mr Douglas when he wrote his present Despatch which crossed the Duke of Newcastle's Despatch of the 20th of August last communicating it to him, and instructing him to take certain measures preparatory to the reconveyance of the Island to the Crown.

5. Until therefore the receipt of the Governor's reply to that communication no further stepappears appears to be necessary in the matter.