A.—3b,

to enclose a copy, pointing out that it was not intended by that proposal to confer any exclusive right of trading on the company. I should be very much obliged if Lord Derby would allow this correction to appear in any papers that may contain the letter of the Agents-General. I have, &c. The Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. F. D. Bell.

Enclosure. ;--. Deae Sie Feancis, — 135, Cromwell Eoad, London, S.W. August 29, 1883. In the able document concerning the Pacific Islands, to which your signature as well as those of other Agents-General are attached, I find a slight error in relation to the South Sea Island scheme which my Government proposed in 1874. The importance of the error, however, is somewhat increased by the fact, that the misconception is made a ground of argument against the scheme, which I venture still to think it would have been desirable to adopt. The memorandum states, in effect, that it was proposed,that the chartered company should be endowed with a monopoly of trading, and proceeds to say that, if the granting of such a monopoly was possible, it was at least open to grave objection. Now it was not intended or proposed that the Government or Legislature should give to the Company any other monopoly than that its own wealth and the largeness of its operations might secure for it. I am sure you will think it right to send the substance of this correction to Lord Derby, to whom the memorandum was addressed. I am, &c. Sir F. D. Bell, K.C.M.G. Agent-General for New Zealand. Julius Vogel.

No. 18. The Agent-Geneeal to the Peemiee. Sib, — 7, Westminster Chambers, London, S.W. December 7, 1883. I beg permission to offer my congratulations on the great event which has taken place in Australasian history, by the meeting of the Convention at Sydney. The first series of resolutions passed by the Convention appeared in yesterday's papers, and has been very favourably received. In my letter of the 30th November (No. 344) I promised to send you a full account of the French claims in the Pacific which appeared lately in the Journal Official. It has been necessary for me to make a careful precis from that statement, and, as I did not like to intrust the translation to any one else, I cannot send it by this mail: I shall, however, do so very shortly, with a map. Upon receiving the intelligence of the meeting of the Convention, it seemed to me that it would be advisable for you to have a summary of the French claims, as well as of my letter of the 30th November, to Lord Derby. Accordingly, I sent you the two telegrams, copies of which are annexed. Three days ago, the Agent-General for New South Wales received a cablegram from the President of the Convention, desiring that every changing phase in the Pacific question which might happen here should be immediately cabled to them. All the Agents-General thereupon met (with the exception of Mr. Archer, who was in Ireland) and agreed upon a cablegram to be sent in reply, stating that we were acting in concert, and would telegraph anything that seemed to us of importance. I trust you will approve of the tone of my letter to Lord Derby of the 30th November. As to that part of it which appeals to Her Majesty's Government on behalf of the native races in the Pacific Islands, it seems to me that, great as would be the calamity to those races if the French scheme were carried out in New Caledonia, it would hardly be greater than that which would fall on the Eastern Pacific, if the Marquesas are used for the recidiviste scheme. The Marquesas and Society Islands, the Low Archipelago, and the Austral Group, which are now the most distant from Europe, will become the nearest when the Panama Canal is open, and Tahiti will probably be the first port of call for Panama steamers south of the equator, as Honolulu is now for San Francisco steamers north of the line. It would indeed be a cruel fate for the aboriginal races in that great cluster of more than a hundred islands, virgin yet of such contamination, if the French should persist in making them the receptacle for their recidiviste criminals. It will not have escaped your attention that Lord Derby, in his correspondence with the Agent-General for Victoria, Mr. Murray Smith (of which I enclose a copy), distinctly contemplated a policy of transferring to the Australasian Colonies the obligations of this country to the native communities of the Pacific ; but I am sure, as I said in my letter to his Lordship, that, neither by the Imperial nor by the Colonial authorities, can those obligations ever be fulfilled, if the Pacific Islands are to be the theatre of this new experiment in criminal law, made by a great and friendly nation. Eeturning to the question of the French claims, you will remember Lord Derby doubting whether the Agents-General were correct in saying, last July, that very little was known in Australasia upon the subject. I believe this doubt arose from the circumstance that the Governors of all the Australasian Colonies are in possession of confidential information from the Colonial Office upon the subject, with copies of the treaties or other instruments affecting the relations of England with Foreign Powers in the Pacific. It will also be in your recollection that Lord Derby sent our letter of the 21st July to the High Commissioner and the other two members of the Western Pacific Committee. The Committee have sent in their report, but it will not be made public for some time—not, at any rate, before it is presented to Parliament. I have, therefore, been unable to obtain a copy of it for the Convention. With regard to Sir George Grey's Confederation Bill, which was reserved for Her Majesty's

For omitted portion of this letter, see A.-3d

See A.-3c, No. 9,

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