Replies to Pregoing Letters.

I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your two letters of 4th and 17th April, both of which reached me yesterday.

I beg to thank your Honor for the prompt manner in which you have taken up this matter, and for the heartiness of the support which you promise on the part of both General and Provincial Governments to carry to a successful issue the proposition contained in my letter of 5th February.

I regret that owing to the departure of the mail at 2 o'clock this afternoon, and my not having yet received any communication from the Agent-General with respect to any instructions he may have received by the last mail from New Zealand in connection with this special settlement scheme, I am unable to inform you what assistance I am likely to expect from the Agent-General to enable me to carry out the details (already too long deferred) of the scheme, and upon the satisfactory working-out of which the success of the scheme so much depends.

I presume that in the course of a day or two I shall receive the necessary instructions from the Agent-General with respect to this matter, for as I informed your Honor in my last letter, I had been requested by the Agent-General to suspend all action in this matter until I received further instructions from him on the subject, I may say that in reply to this request of the Agent-General's, I told him that although I was willing to obey the spirit of his instructions, it was utterly impossible for me in this instance to obey him to the letter, as the substance of your Honors telegram to me had been already communicated by me to the parties chiefly interested, and it would have been page 10 fatal to the success of the scheme, had I actually suspended all action in the matter.

I trust, however, that now should the tenor of the Agent General's despatches by this last mail agree with the letter I have received from your Honor, he will give that assistance, which from his position is of course absolutely necessary, to the successful carrying out of the scheme.