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am directed by the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury to transmit to you the inclosed copy of a letter which they have caused to be addressed to the War Office on the subject, and I am to request that you will lay it before the Secretary of State.

I am, &c.

(Signed)

R. R. W. LINGEN.

Inclosure in No. 126.

(Confidential.) Sir,

Treasury Chambers, May 22, 1878. WITH reference to Mr. Meade's letter of the 15th instant to the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, and to the letter from this Board of the 2nd instant, of which a copy was sent from the Colonial Office to the War Office, upon the subject of defences for the Colonies, I am directed by the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury to request you to inform Colonel Stanley that my Lords intended by their said letter of the 2nd instant to sanction an immediate expenditure not exceeding 213,4001., so far as the objects of it were urgent and of imperial importance.

My Lords did not intend the paragraphs which relate to so much of this expenditure as is for guns and gunboats to be an exception to their sanction, but only to mark that Army and Navy Votes would be the funds to be primarily charged, and that it was desirable that whatever proposals might reach the Treasury from the Defence Committee through the Colonial Office should be understood to have been concurred in by the Secretary of State for War and by the Lords of the Admiralty.

My Lords look to the Secretary of State for the Colonies to be the channel of communication between the Defence Committee and themselves in all that relates to the Colonies, and they rely upon his furnishing them, as soon as possible, with suggestions for apportioning the incidence of the charge for defence between each Colony and the mother

country.

In the meantime, there is no doubt that the expenditure, so far as it is urgent, must be defrayed out of Army and Navy Votes, and that the action of the Treasury must be mainly confined to approving or not approving the amount of this expenditure, and to authorizing the War Office and Admiralty to incur their respective shares of it if approved. My Lords desire to express their earnest hope that the Defence Committee will frame all their estimates with the utmost care, to avoid future excess estimates.

The Under-Secretary of State,

I am, &c

(Signed)

R. R. W. LINGEN.

War Office.

No. 127.

The Earl of Dufferin to the Right Hon. Sir M. E. Hicks Beach, Bart.—(Received May 23.)

Government House, Ottawa, May 7, 1878.

(Secret.) Sir,

I SUBMITTED to my advisers a copy of your despatch of the 18th March last, marked Secret, in reply to a telegram which I had the honour to address to you on the 2nd of that month, preferring a request on the part of the Government of British Columbia for the loan of certain guns and ammunition in store at Victoria.

I have now the honour of forwarding, for the consideration of Her Majesty's Govern- ment, a copy of a letter from the Department of the Minister of Militia and Defence, inclosing copies of communications from the General Officer Commanding the Militia of the Dominion, and from Colonel G. Blair, R.A., having reference to the defence of the town and harbour of Victoria.

I have, &c. (Signed)

DUFFERIN.

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