The capital city must be here

If Governor Frederick Seymour has really (as is asserted by the Canadian News) sent a cable telegram to London announcing his intention of establishing the seat of government at Victoria, he has arrived at a very wise decision and one which, as the News remarks, will give great satisfaction to nine-10ths of the colonists, although we are constrained to add that had the announcement been made a year ago, the colony would have been in a much more favourable financial condition than it is found today and New Westminster have derived real benefit therefrom, for it is quite apparent to all here that the state of uncertainty which has prevailed at that town since union was proclaimed has been productive of injury to its businessmen, who are led by the fallacious reasoning of their local journals into the belief that the removal of the seat of government to any other spot will inflict a death blow to their interests.

The absurdity of this idea must be evident to any unprejudiced person who will take the trouble to consider the question for a moment. That the attempt to fix the seat of government at New Westminster has resulted disastrously for the colony, the poverty of the public money chest furnishes the most conclusive testimony, and that the attempt has wrought a positive injury to New Westminster is a conviction that is every day growing stronger.

Only yesterday, our river contemporaries came to us filled with complaints against the surveyor general for not working impossibilities; and one of the papers (the vulgar Columbian) indulges in the charitable wish that that official might stick in one of the holes which his “negligence” has suffered to multiply in the Burrard Inlet road.

The condition of that road, we are credibly informed, is positively awful.

It is nine miles in length, and the salvation of the traffic now enjoyed by New Westminster with the mills at the head of the inlet depends upon its being kept in repair. Ten thousand dollars are required to be expended before it can be rendered travelable with security for life and limb.

But what can the surveyor general do with an empty treasury? An emptiness for which the very journals that have united in denouncing him are responsible.

Had those papers listened to reason last spring, and offered no opposition to the removal of the capital to Victoria and a retrenchment in every branch of the public service, for which a majority of the popular members so earnestly and ably pleaded, no complaints would be heard today of a loss of business by New Westminster traders because the Burrard Inlet road is impassable.

No there would not only be in the treasury $10,000 for that desired object, but a sum sufficient to defray the expenses of every other necessary public work.

Yet the foolish people of that unhappy little town have insisted upon the adoption of a line of policy that has made the support of two establishments necessary.

Their whole course has been as selfish and grasping as that of Victoria has been disinterested and generous.

Victoria has never rested her claims to the capital upon “public faith and honour” (although had she chosen to urge her right to it upon that ground her title would be indisputable), but she has asked that it be located here as a matter of economy and convenience.

Local considerations have never been placed in the scale, nor have they carried weight with her public men. The good of the whole colony has been sought.

Here the capital must, sooner or later, by the force of circumstances, gravitate, New Westminster opposition to the contrary notwithstanding; and if the miserable shortsighted policy of the residents of the town should continue to cut it off from communication with the upper country several months of each year, should destroy its shipping interests by preventing the relaying of the buoys, and, by placing it out of the power of the government to furnish means for improving the road to Burrard Inlet, promote the establishment of a rival town there to supply the local demand, and ultimately, that of the lower river, the fault will lie at their own doors, and not at that of the governor, or the surveyor general, or the people of Victoria. The Daily British Colonist and Victoria Chronicle

Dec. 12, 1867