fields and plundered cities of Kandahar and Kabul, of Sindh, and of Gwalior, are yet steaming and smoking before us, in the freshness of their recent de yastation. Nay, in justification of the contemplated invasion and conquest of the Punjab, we are now told, by those very presses, which are most clamorous in denunciation of the bloodless and voluntary union of Texas with the United States, that, In India we (the British) shall be impelled, irresistibly, to extend our dominions, till we have reached the natural limits of the Empire, where the impulse of conquest will cease of itself.' We are further told that,― 'GROWTH is now, and must, for some time, continue to be the normal state of our (England's) existence in the East.' In accordance with which doctrine, we (Americans) might well ask: What are those natural limits of the United States, where the impulse of annexation will cease of itself? Is not growth, the normal state, also, of the Federal Union? And another of those, who, as Englishmen, regard, with such holy horror, the ambition of the United States, proceeds, as counsellor of the East India Company, to hold the following language: The pear hangs mellow on the tree, ready to be shaken down. So the fate of It is to be taken the Punjab is sealed. into subsidiary alliance, and to follow the steps of Hydrabad, and Oude, and Gwalior, and some score other British allies and tributaries, if so they are to be called. Of course the necessity of this movement is undeniable. A state which cannot govern itself must be governed by its neighbors, for the interests of humanity are at stake. Without an efficient government, a territory soon becomes a public nuisance, the harbor of disaffection and outrage, the focus of intrigue, the nursery of revolutions and wars. It is enough that a territory is in so disorderly a condition as to entail on its neighbors the necessity of continual, inconvenient, and expensive precautions. It is enough that it involves a more oppressive police, a large standing army, or any other interference with the Such liberties and immunities of peace. is the state of all that region enclosed within the Upper Indus and its tributaries. Bloody revolutions, an insolent and rebellious soldiery, a ruined and distracted people, keep Northern India in perpetual alarm. Self-preservation compels the This, we suppose, may be considered Such is the present Now and then, a glimmering of the truth in this matter, seems to break in upon the self-complacent benightedness of the English mind. The Spectator inclines! to deny the right of any state to make the internal conduct of another a casus belli, or to wage war on any such Quixotic plea, as disputed titles and wronged sovereigns.'-Most modest of all inclinations! The English sneer at what they consider the ignorance of international law on the part of American statesmen; forgetting that the only books ever written on this subject in the English language were written by an American. We should be glad to know in what text-book of the law of nations any countenance is given to the English assertion of a right to intervene in the affairs of every territory which happens for the time being to be without an efficient government,' or in what textbook room is left for a mere inclination to deny this right. And we suppose the Spectator would incline to deny the right of England to conclude a fraudulent treaty with the Emirs of Sindh, in the express purpose, as admitted by her agents, of placing a bomb' in the midst of the Emirs to blow them up; for the Spectator proceeds with extreme naivetè to affirm, that The adoption of the puppet Shah Shoojah against Dost Mahommed, whom we had acknowledged, was one of the most impudent and naked lies in the annals of diplomacy ;' and then touches the very point, rem acu,—in saying: 'Mr. Thornton seems to have adopted Sir Robert Peel's notion, that political morality is matter of geography; that the laws of right depend upon latitude and longitude; and that in the East Indies they are altogether suspended in favor of the Company' Aye, that is the evil: the political functions of the East India Company. England is full of great and good men : none greater, none better, are to be found in Christendom. Though British statesmen, British lawyers, and British critics have neglected the study of the law of nations to a degree which it is difficult to conceive of,-so that nearly all they have written on the subject, consists of mere party-pamphlets,-and though their chief diplomatic contentions in Europe and America, have been efforts to interpolate in the law of nations new doctrines of blockade, search, capture, and prize, which doctrines England will be the first to deny, on the day, not far distant perhaps, when they come to be applied to her, notwithstanding all this, the British mind is deeply imbued with religious and ethical principles, and ...with sincere love of fair play at least, if not of abstract right. But the British mind is insular and insulated, and therefore, in all international questions, selfishly and intensely British. And her very government is in the nature of a close corporation which fact has always produced a deleterious influence on the conduct of the British. Other wise, in past times, she would not have engaged and persevered so long in the war of the Succession, and even exiled Bolingbroke for terminating it by the treaty of Utrecht: of which one of the greatest of modern historians says truly: "The evil thus done to humanity by the victories of Britain was immense, but the nation did not see it; and even while Germany, and endeavoring to impose on she was riveting the chains of Italy and Spain a sovereign it abhorred, she flattered herself with the idea that she was combatting for liberty; nay, she continued to talk still of the European balance of power, at the very moment when the continuation of the war could have no other effect but to subject all Europe to the odious yoke of Austria."-(Sismondi.) And otherwise, that is, but for the egotism of her public policy, England could never have been ready to plunge into war with Spain, at a more recent period, on so absurd a pretext as that of defending Meares at Nootka Sound, he being an Englishman to be sure, but an adventurer in the service of the Portuguese, commanding a Portuguese merchant ship, fitted out by Portuguese merchants at Macao, and entitled, as against Spain, (in that particular adventure,) to the protection of Portugal alone. And But Great Britain sees what is for her own interest too clearly and strongly to have any distinct perception either of the rights of others or of the wrong involved in the gratification of her own public and private ambition. when importunate conscience will now and then bring before her mind's eye, the picture of the hecatombs of distant Asiatics slaughtered on the altar of cupidity and lust of power, she hugs herself in the pleasant reflection that all this iniquity is the act of the East India Company. Else how were it possible for her to remember, with still fresh resentment, the sufferings of the one hundred and twenty two Englishmen put to death by the caprice or neglect of Surajee-ud-Dowlah a century ago, and to forget the myriads of Hindus slaughtered with no more of justice or right by herself? Else how were it possible for her to exhibit so much righteous indignation in view of the alleged wrongs inflicted by Russia on Shamyl and his Caucasians, regardless of the far greater and less palliable wrongs inflicted by her on tae Afghâns? Events have occurred during the last incidents. The terrible catastrophe of But, in the more diffused notice which events on the other side of the Atlantic now receive among us, and with our better knowledge of the nature of the East India Company, have we paid due attention to what has been, or yet may be done, by a similar Company in North America? In the reigns of Elizabeth and of the Stuarts, the whole universe was distributed among various Companies of Adventure. By some of these (or under their nominal authority,) were several of the now United States colonized and established. In all these cases, the colonists brought with them, or assumed here, the powers of political administration; and they became localized at once as political communities or governments. But the Adventurers of the Hudson's Bay Company,' established under a charter of Charles the Sec ond, for the objects of navigation, fisheries, and the fur trade, on the Bay of that name, continued to wear the form of a foreign sovereignty, not of a colony or naturalized government. Separated, as the territory of the Hudson's Bay Company was, from the then British Colonies, by the interposition of the French establishments on the St. Lawrence, it could not well maintain itself during the war of the Spanish Succession; but it was restored to Great Britain by the Treaty of Utrecht, and thus acquired a recognized treaty-existence, as between France and England. And when the French and English Commissioners met, under that treaty, it was found that England, in the name of the Hudson's Bay Company, put forward a claim of that Company to new territory, by extension of contiguity, which brought down the Company's domain in the rear of Canada, to the boundaries of Louisiana. Such extension was, indeed, if the principle were admitted at all, a natural one in point of course, being directly inland from Hudson's Bay. But nothing was then finally determined in this respect; and it was not until the year 1818, that the relative boundaries of the Hudson's Bay Company and of Louisiana were virtually fixed; and then it was by the treaty between the United States and Great Britain, defining our respective limits, on the line from the Lake of the Woods, along the forty-ninth parallel of latitude to the Rocky Mountains. In this vast region, then, between the Arctic Sea on the north, Hudson's Bay on the east, the forty-ninth parallel on the south, and the Rocky Mountains on the west, might the Hudson's Bay Company roam, expatiate, and if it pleased, colonize, under the charter of Charles, which made them absolute lords and proprietors of all the lands on the coasts and confines of the seas, lakes, and rivers, within the Hudson's Straits, not actually possessed by the subjects of any other prince or state. To be sure, after the conquest of Canada by England, the Hudson's Bay Company became subject to the competition and the intrusion of a new Fur Company organized in the British Provinces, denominated the Northwest Company; and these rival companies proceeded to carry on actual war, though on a petty scale, in those wide boreal districts of America. These quarrels were terminated by an act of Parliament, of the year 1821, 1 and 2 Geo. IV., ch. 66, which united the two Companies, and which (with the new charter granted under it.) materially affects the interests of the United States. In the first place, the act itself gives to the courts of Upper Canada, the same civil jurisdiction, in all respects, in the parts of North America, not within the limits of Upper or Lower Canada, nor of any civil government of the United States, as they have within the limits of Upper Canada. This provision is a manifest usurpation of the rights of the United States; for, by the words, the parts of North America not within any civil government of the United States, it confers on the Canadian courts jurisdiction, not only over the original and proper territory of the Hudson's Bay Company, but over the whole of the country of Oregon, in open violation of the spirit, if not the letter, of the recent convention between the two governments, agreeing that for ten years (afterwards extended indefinitely until notice) the country of Oregon should remain free and open to the vessels, citizens and subjects of the two powers, without prejudice to the ultimate sovereignty of either. In Oregon, of course, under this convention, the United States had established nocivil government,' conceiving that to do so, would be an infraction of the agreement, to leave the sovereignty in abeyance. But this act of Parliament, at once, and by expressions artfully framed, it would seem, for that very purpose, extended the sovereignty of England over the whole of Oregon, notwithstanding the agreement. In the second place, the new functions assigned by charter to the Hudson's Bay Company were, in operation, still more injurious to the United States. This company received the exclusive privilege, as against other British subjects, of trading with the Indians in all such parts of North America to the northward or to the westward of the territories of the United States, as do not form part of the British Provinces, or of the territories of any European Power. This grant carries the Hudson's Bay Company, for the purposes of trade, into Oregon, nay, into California, where it has actually gone, for California is west ward of the territories of the United States, and forms, now, no part of the territories of any European Power. In the regions east of the Rocky Mountains, the company continues to be lord of the soil, and virtual sovereign, by force of the original charter from King Charles. West of the Rocky Mountains, the company has no legal interest in the soil, no authority to make settlements, and no rights of trade except in fur, or with the Indians. In Oregon, therefore, the company is literally, and in the familiar language, a squatter. And here come in play those extremely convenient and valuable qualities, of a trading corporation invested with the powers of sovereignty, which have made the East India Company so potent, and enabled England to do without seeming to do, so many bold and ambitious things in the East, and which for that reason render the East India Company and the Hudson's Bay Company far more dangerous neighbors than even the British Government itself. For, under cover of the Hudson's Bay Company, though that company be in Oregon but a mere squatter in law, having no rights of settlement and but limited rights of trade, the British Government is able to send into Oregon by indirection, what she would not and could not have done directly, her courts, her colonists, her government, and a commercial monopoly of the fur trade, and most other trade of all Oregon. Great Britain commissions no magistrates for Oregon; but she gives juridical commissions there to the officers of the intruded Hudson's Bay Company. Great Britain despatches no political functionaries into Oregon; but the proper territory of the Hudson's Bay Company is a vast Province of the British Empire, and the Company is, by the very nature of its organization and functions, a provincial government, and also a department or bureau of the British Government, and acts thus as a political power in Oregon, though an intruded and usurping one. Great Britain establishes no military posts in Oregon in her own name; but the Hudson's Bay Company has sovereign attributes by charter, and officers and a flag of its own, and the right to enlist armed men; and the company, shus intruder though it be, throws a net-work of British military posts over Great Britain would not openly as- Great Britain would not profess to expel American traders from Oregon; but the Hudson's Bay Company does it intrusively with her knowledge and British rivals, says the sanction. Edinburgh Review, the company excludes by law; Russians and Americans by reckless competition. If an American post is established, a Hudson's Bay post instantly rises in its neighborhood. If an American vessel trades along the coast, a company's ship follows in her wake. If an American offers goods for barter, the company, whatever be the loss, undersells him. And the official correspondence of the company with the English Colonial Secretary, in explaining this to Lord Glenelg, adds: We have compelled the American adventurers one by one to withdraw from the country.' Remember, the country is by treaty to be 'free and open' to the citizens and subjects of both Powers; and yet the British Government throws into the country the provincial government of the Hudson's Bay Company, and by means of this, intruder though it be, compels all American adventurers to give up the whole fur trade of Oregon. Great Britain would not undertake, in her own name, to monopolize the trade of the Northwest Coast, from California to Alaska, with Mexico and Russia to remonstrate against it as well as the United States; but she endeavors to do this by the indirect agency of the Hudson's Bay Company; for the company applies its system of underselling to the Russians as well as the Americans; it has a factory on the Bay of San Francisco, and is now engaged in the general commerce of the Coast, raising and carrying provisions to the Russian settlements, provisions and lumber to the Sandwich Islands, and coast productions to Great Britain. To be sure, all this is beyond the charter of the company; but it is present in Oregon at all only as a squatter; and the breach of charter is evaded by organizing the members of the Hudson's Bay Company, and its officers, into |