In 1836 the company had paid the heirs of Lord Selkirk for the return of the Red River territory a sum which stood on its books as a balance between the cost, the interest added, and the profits deducted, at £84,111. In the region covered by the company's trade there were 136 posts, besides hunting and fishing stations: these were held by 25 chief factors, 27 chief traders, 152 clerks, and 1,200 regular, besides other temporary, servants, many of them natives. There were twenty-two principal trading and distributing centres. In the list of the company printed in November, 1847, there were 239 proprietors of stock of the capital of £400,000. Each member to be eligible to the committee of seven must hold at least £1,800 in stock. The sales of the furs were made several times a year, at auction, at the company's office in London. There were great variations in the prices. Thus, in 1839, 55,486 beaver skins brought £76,312. But in 1846, 45,389 brought only £7,856. Of an average revenue of £200,000, the profits beyond expenses were £110,000. In its most active trade, the annual export of the Bay was valued at £25,000.1 The annual profits were apportioned into one hundred shares. Of these the proprietors of stock received sixty; the other forty were divided between the chief factors and the chief traders, the former having two parts to the latter's one. This was instead of salary to such officials. On retiring from service the full payment was rendered for one year, and half the amount for the following five years, free from any risk through the company's losses. Thrifty apprentices would leave a large portion of their annual pay at interest in the hands of the company. Many who had been long in service retired on a fair competency. One such left a legacy of £10,000 to promote the interests of education and religion in the Red River Settlement. The company, by its method of dividing profits among its officials, secured their best coöperation more effectually than if it had paid a scale of salaries. When two chief traders retired, one clerk could be promoted. When two chief factors retired, a chief trader could be promoted. When the limited pensions of retired partners fell in, there was another chance for the promotion of a clerk. In the inquiry before the parliamentary committee in 1857, it appeared, from the return of the secretary of the company, that it had voted to add £100,000 to the estimate of capital, and to have it stand at £500,000. The assets were then estimated, beyond liabilities, at £1,265,067 19s. 4d. During the ten years between 1847 and 1856, the annual dividends were ten per cent., besides more than twenty-three per cent. during the period paid as new stock. Of the 268 proprietors in July, 1856, 196 had pur chased their stock from 220 to 240 per cent. Governor Pelly admitted that from 1690 to 1800 the annual profits on the capital stock actually paid in were from sixty to seventy per cent. In view of facts which are brought under our notice, this passing year, of the enterprise, prosperity, and rich prospects of the province of Manitoba, the present representative of the Red River Settlement, it is amusingly, even ludicrously suggestive of the blind with which ends of selfish policy will cover even the sharpest eyes, to read the testimony which the Bay Company offered to the parliamentary committee as to the fitness of any portions of its territories for colonies and agricultural settlements. One single plain question, straightly put and frankly answered, would have saved the space of many pages of examination, cross-examination, ingenious dodging, and equivocal assertions on the present record. That question as addressed to the company might have been this: Will the use to which you put your vast territories consist with any other use that would accrue to the advantage of any party besides the Hudson's Bay Company? The frank answer would have been No. The only suggestion which will save the credit of the company from just reflections upon the obstructive and misleading results to which it appeared to wish to lead the inquiry as to the qualities of soil and climate in its territories, is found in allowance for its long-indulged prejudices and prepossessions. Many hints are dropped, in the large class of books written by the employés of the Bay Company, that it discouraged any enterprises of tillage and even of garden culture about its posts. Where occasionally such oases appeared they are ascribed to the thrift or good taste of a factor, trader, or other officer. Among those who took the stand before the committee, and who were sharply questioned on this point, were John Ross, Esq., Dr. J. Rae, Col. J. H. Lefroy, Sir George Simpson, Hon. Edward Ellice, and Sir John Richardson. They had each and all the best means of knowledge of the character and qualities of large sections of the expanded territories under the control of the company, while of course there were larger portions which were most imperfectly known; and each and all of them gave the most discouraging testimony concerning the inhospitality of the country, its uninviting character, its wide stretches of barrenness, its treacherous frosts, its dismal reaches of swamp and marsh, its treeless plains, and of the limitation of fertility to the near banks of rivers. Sir George Simpson, who in his long service of local governor had floated or tramped most widely over the country, pronounced its soil to be poor, its climate treacherous, and all its produce at the mercy of devastating inundations. This was said of the Red River Settlement and its surroundings. Richardson, the Arctic explorer, testified that the land was worthless for settlement, and he marvelled that it had ever been entered upon except for furs. Mr. Ellice affirmed that it was no place for agricultural settlers, and he volunteered to say the same of the border territory of Minnesota, now so luxuriant. Strange enough is it to turn from these doleful judgments to the facts verified and illustrated twenty-five years after the date of their utterance. The Red River Settlement, represented now by the province of Manitoba, is known as perhaps the richest wheat-growing country of the whole globe. Annual crops have been reaped in succession from its fields for sixty years, without the use of any fertilizers. The farmers have no use for the stable manure. Indeed, it was found necessary to pass an ordinance imposing a penalty of twenty-five dollars on any one who should pollute the river, as actually had been done by dumping into it the heaps of the barnyard. We read of sixty and seventy bushels of wheat grown to the acre; of single 'potatoes that weigh two pounds, and turnips twenty pounds; of squashes one hundred and thirty-eight pounds, and of cabbages five feet in girth. The region is in fact the bed of an old fresh-water sea that has gathered the loam and muck of ages. The extent of this fertile region is four hundred miles in length by seventy in breadth.1 Happily Mr. Gladstone was not convinced by the testimony offered that the vast territories held by the Bay Company were designed and adapted by Providence solely for a preserve for fur-bearing animals. He had satisfied himself that while the lands below the boundary line were being so rapidly and prosperously turned to account by the enterprise of settlers in the United States, it could not be that the blight of desolation and barrenness was visited on Rupert's Land. The result of the parliamentary inquiry was expressed in the acceptance of two resolutions, proposed by Mr. Gladstone: first, that the territory capable of colonization and settlement should. be withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the company; second, that the territory unsuited to such uses should remain under its jurisdiction. These resolutions were accompanied by a suggestion from the committee to the Bay Company that an amicable arrangement should be made for bringing the question of Canadian boundary lines before the judicial committee of the privy council. Governor Pelly, in behalf of the company, consented to the proposal, suggesting that due regard be had to keeping good faith with shareholders and with parties who had purchased lands of the company, and recognizing the just claims of factors, traders, and servants at its posts. More than ten years were yet to pass before the final disposal of the controverted interests. New and very pressing elements came rapidly into the issue to compel decisive action. The claims of Canada for the extension of its bounds and the amazing vigor exhibited by the United States in the construction of transcontinental railroads brought out in strong contrast the strange arrest and prohibition of all like enterprise north of the boundary line. Emigration and colonization companies under British patronage stood ready to turn to account opportunities which seemed to invite and even 1 [Fort Garry, for instance, is on the summer line of Vermont and New Hampshire. Cf. map of the Dominion of Canada, in A. T. Russell's Red River Country (Ottawa, 1869, and Montreal, 1870). The fertile belt, extending from the Lake of the Woods with a northerly sweep so as in part to embrace the valleys of the Assiniboin and Saskatchewan rivers and reaching to the Rocky Mountains, is shown in the map in the 2d vol. of H. Y. Hind's Canadian Red River Exploring Expedition of 1857 (London, 1860). ED.] to compel activity. Jealousy at the manifestation of a strong preference by British emigrants for settling in the United States came in as quite a potent motive for bringing the monopoly of the Bay Company to a close. As a result, an act was passed by the British Parliament in 1867, enabling the Queen to accept a surrender on terms to be agreed upon, of the lands, privileges, and rights of the company, and for transfer of territory and administration to the Dominion of Canada.1 An act, designated the "Rupert's Land Act," had made it competent for the company to surrender, and for the Queen to accept, all the lands, privileges, rights, etc., granted to the company by its charter. An address from the Canadian Parliament to the Queen in council asked liberty to admit Rupert's Land and the Northwest territory to union with the Dominion, and power of legislation for them by the Parliament on terms hereafter. The terms secured by the company were certainly of a most generous character, and are in keeping with the remarkable pecuniary profit which had attended its operations during the two centuries of its chartered existence. The company was still in its corporate capacity to be allowed to carry on its trade, and to be paid for its franchise the sum of £300,000 by the Canadian government. It was to retain the fee of all its posts and stations, with a reservation of an additional block of land at each of them, and one twentieth section of the so-called "fertile belt," to be decided by the casting of the lot. All titles of land that had been heretofore given by the company were to be confirmed, and the Canadian and imperial governments were to relieve it of all responsibility in settling the claims of the Indians. The reserved lands thus covenanted to the company make up in area 45,160 acres. Of these, 25,700 acres are in that marvellously rich territory of the "fertile belt," between the northern branch of the Saskatchewan and the boundary of the United States. The globe has no more teeming soil than is found there. And now the venerable Hudson Bay Company is a rival in the market as a land company! It is a curious and amusing spectacle to look at it in its present capacity, after having read the voluminous testimony before rehearsed as offered before the parliamentary committee, in the interest of the company, to prove that the territory was put to its best use by the Indian fur-hunter with his traps, and was worthless for all ends of husbandry and agriculture. Of course the grounds reserved by the company have acquired a vastly enhanced value, especially the five hundred acres near the site of old Fort Garry, in Winnipeg, the centre of life in the province of Manitoba.2 It is thought that the financial prosperity of the company in its present field of operations will even exceed that of any period in its past. 1 British Public Bills, vol. ii. 1867-8. 2 The parliamentary acts, with all the accompanying documents, schedules, etc., of this some what complicated negotiation are in the London Gazette of June 24, 1870. THE CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION. HE large body of narrative, descriptive, and controversial literature upon which the story of the preceding chapter is based may be divided into two classes. The one embraces the publications issued by the British government as containing the processes and results of official inquiries into the affairs and the administration of the Hudson Bay Company. In those volumes we find the charter of the company; 2 the successive grants of privileges in territory not included in the charter; illustrative and explanatory documents; official correspondence, petitions, memorials, reports of committees of inquiry; the testimony of witnesses in complaint or defence; and a detail of the course through which, in the action of the imperial government and of the Dominion government of Canada, the territorial rights and administrative powers held by the Bay Company under its charter were surrendered on terms, including remuneration. The volumes of British Documents which have furnished matter of information and illustration are the following: Papers presented to the committee appointed to inquire into the state and condition of the countries adjoining to Hudson's Bay, and of the trade carried on there (London, 1749); and the committee's Report (London, 1749). It is also in the Reports from Committees, House of Commons, vol. ii. Accounts and Papers, vol. xxviii., 1842.8 Reports of Committees, vol. xv., 1857.6 The last-named volume is wholly filled with a most minute inquiry into the administration of the Bay Company. The volumes by Mr. Martin and Mr. Fitzgerald, referred to further on, may be put in the class of authorities here noticed." The other class of publications, notices of many of which are to be given, are those of a descriptive or narrative character, as presenting the practical operations of the company 1 This is the designation of the charter, and is the form followed in this essay, except where the other usage, Hudson's Bay Company, is quoted or occurs in a title. 2 It is also given by Dobbs, by Mills (Boundaries of Ontario), and others. Cf. Papers relating to the Hudson's Bay Company's charter and license to trade (London, 1859); Martin's Hudson's Bay Territories; H. H. Bancroft's Northwest Coast, i. 470, etc. This contains Hudson's Bay Company. Copy of the existing charter or grant by the Crown to the Hudson's Bay Company; together with copies or extracts of the correspondence which took place at the last renewal of the charter between the gov ernment and the company, or of individuals on behalf of the company; also, the dates of all former charters or grants to that company. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 8 August, 1842 (London, 1842). Copies of Memorials of the Red River Settlement, complaining of the government of the Hudson's Bay Company; of instructions given to the Gov.-Gen. of Canada for the investigation of those complaints; of the Reports and Correspondence, ordered to be printed, 13 April, 1849. VOL. VIII. — 5 5 Papers presented to the House of Commons, in pursuance of an address, that means be taken to ascertain the legality of the powers in respect to territory, trade, taxation, and government, claimed or exercised by the Hudson's Bay Company. Or. dered by the House of Commons to be printed, 12 July, 1850. Report from the Select Committee on the Hudson's Bay Company, together with the proceedings of the committee, minutes of evidence, appendix, and Index (London, 1857). This report is accompanied by three maps: one showing the water-shed of Hudson's Bay (after Arrowsmith) as the territory claimed under the charter; a second denoting the boundaries of the regions occupied by the various Indian tribes north of the Gulf of Mexico; the third shows the country south, west, and north of Hudson's Bay, drawn by Thomas Devine, by order of the Commissioner of Crown Lands, Joseph Canchon, Toronto, March, 1857. 7 [Brymner (Report on the Dominion Archives, 1873) gives an account of his examination of the records of the company in London. In Ibid. 1883, p. 173, he prints an account of the transactions of the company in 1687. — ED.] |