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Date: 1865-07-06
By: Richard Graves Macdonnell
Citation: Despatch from Lieutenant-Governor Richard Graves Macdonnell to Right. Hon. Edward Cardwell (6 July 1865) in UK, Parliament, Correspondence respecting the Proposed Union of the British North American Provinces (London: George Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoode, 1867).
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No.10.

COPY of a DESPATCH from Lieut.-Governor Sir R. G. MACDONNELL, C.B., to the Right Hon. Edward Cardwell, M.P.

(No.93.)

Government House, Halifax, Nova Scotia, July 6, 1865.
(Received July 17, 1865.)
(Answered No. 36. July 22, 1865. Page 80.)

SIR,

I HAVE the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your Despatch No. 29.* of the 24th June, transmitting a copy of a correspondence between yourself and Lord Monck on the affairs of British North America, and more especially alluding to the recent conferences between Her Majesty’s Government and a deputation from that of Canada.

Your Despatch addressed to myself contains such an earnest and emphatic declaration of the views of Her Majesty’s Government as to the paramount importance of union under one government, and those views are, moreover, expressed in a manner so calculated to impress the people of this Province with a sense of the jast authority attaching to the deliberate opinion of Her Majesty’s Government, that i have felt it my duty not to withhold that Despatch a single day from publicity.

If my action were to be limited by your instruction to lay the correspondence before the Legislature of Nova Scotia as its next meeting the friends of Confederation would probably find themselves deprived till next February of the very great support which they cannot but derive from an earlier publication of so judicious an exposition of the opinions of Her Majesty’s Government, I have therefore not hesitated to give it immediate publicity, as you will perceive from the enclosed copy of the Royal Gazette of the 5th instant, and i trust that you will approve the course which i have adopted.

I have, &c.

(Signed) RICHARD GRAVES MACDONNELL,
Lieut.-Governor

The Right Hon. Edward Cardwell, M.P.
&c. &c. &c.