Colonial Despatches

Sir F. Rogers
The next step is to ask the D of Buckingham whether he intended Mr Seymour to draw the £1000 a year from the Crown Fund. See your Minute on 11115.

I do not, on second thoughts, see that the Duke of Buckms intention is material. The question is what Mr Seymour was entitled to expect or justified in understanding from the correspondence taken as a whole.

It is quite clear that Lord Carnarvon awarded to Govr Seymour 5000£ a year, leaving it to him to determine whether he should or should not receive more than £4000. Mr Seymour was entitled to suppose that this was done with proper authy.

2. Governor Seymour wrote a despatch, assuming himself to be entitled to 5000£ admitting that the S. of S's sanction was requisite in order to take the 1000£ in the only way in which it could be got—from the Crown Fund and expressing his readiness to give up the 1000£ on certain terms and asking for instructions.

He received an answer which gave no instructions, but merely expressed concurrence in the opinion that the money cd not be got from the general Revenue.

Therefore he seems to have helped himself from the Crown Reve.

This was evidently irregular. He had no right to [forestal?] the formal authority of the S. of State, which also should not have been given witht consulting the Treasury.

If Mr Seymour had lived it would have been a question what notice ought to have been taken of this irregularity as a matter of official discipline.

But assuming that the Treasury concurrence wd have been given if applied for by Ld Carnarvon to the proposed rate of Salary, the transaction was not in substance an improper one. The sum appropriated by Mr Seymour, was not greater than that wh was pledged to him—subject only to the possibility that he mt himself not chose to exact it.

I therefore should not require his representatives—probably his widow, to refund it.

But it is a different case with Mr Hankin. To him no expectation has been held forth and he is merely entitled to one half of the legal Salary of the Governor—i.e. 4000£ a year.

I would therefore write to Mr Musgrave that Mr Seymour had never received any official authority to draw the 1000£ from the Crown Fund, nor had that step been submitted either officially or unofficially to the Lords of the Treasury whose concurrence was requisite for it. That under these circumstances and in the existing state of the finances of B.C. that Lord G cannot sanction the payment of Salary at any greater rate than 2000£ per ann, to Mr Hankin, and 4000£ to Musgrave—but that he is of opinion that any motion for reduction below that sum may be met, by pointing out to the Council that the reduction has practically been effected by discontinuing the payment of 1000£ hitherto made to Mr Seymour from the Crown Fund.

Request to be informed what amount has been drawn from the Crown Fund on this acct and up to what period the accounts of that Fund have been sent home for audit.

I would send the correspondence to the Treasury, with a statement of the reasons which led Ld G. to consider that the money should not be reclaimed from Mrs Seymour and stating that, witht anticipating their Lps decision on the subject—wh mt be delayed till Mr M's reply was received Lord G. wd be glad to know whether their Lps considered it requisite at the present moment to make any communication to Mr Seymour's represve.

If there is any serious intention of reclaiming the money, this shd be done at once.

Draft reply, Granville to Musgrave, No. 1, 10 January 1870.

Rogers to Secretary to the Treasury, 12 January 1870, forwarding correspondence on the subject, with explanation, and asking whether they concur in the opinion that the money should not be reclaimed from Seymour's representative.