counsel in 1816. Recalling the fact that the charter had been granted solely by the king, without the sanction of Parliament, it was pleaded that this royal prerogative had been judicially approved as allowed before the English Revolution, though not afterwards. The question of the validity of a similar royal charter had been raised in the case of the East India Company, and had been decided upon favorably in the King's Bench. Colonial officers, committees, and legal counsel seem on several occasions to have thought it wise not to open the fundamental question. Supposing, however, that the king might have lawfully granted a patent of territory, a vulnerable point was found in other grants conveyed by the charter. It gave a monopoly of trade to some British subjects, excluding all others; and the favored parties were empowered to impose fines and penalties, to arrest interlopers, and to seize and confiscate goods and ships. The charter had been strained to cover illegalities. It granted certain lands and waters "within the straits." These were to be reasonably limited, and not extended to lands two thousand miles distant. Some of those far-off regions were certainly to be left free to other British subjects. The French had laid a claim to the territory prior to that of Britain. Whatever the territorial rights of the French were, on the cession of Canada these rights would go through the king of England equally to all his subjects. Then, too, the sub-grant to Lord Selkirk was illegal, because the region was thus made independent of the company, and assigned to other uses than those of the company. The latter could only insist upon the rightfulness of all the claims which it asserted under the charter; and it urged that though the parliamentary sanction in the act of 1690, limited to seven years, had not been renewed, yet, in a series of acts, in 1708, 1744, 1803, and 1818, when rights of trade in America were secured to British subjects, there were saving clauses which protected the company.

In 1837, when only fifteen of the twenty-one years for which the license for "exclusive trade" with the natives in the Indian Territory had expired, the governor of the London company, J. H. Pelly, asked of the crown a prospective renewal for twenty-one years further. The privilege sought was not to be exercised to the prejudice of any foreign power to the westward of the Rocky Mountains, with which there was a temporary convention. The company made a strong appeal on its claims and merits. the coalition with the North West Company there had been no rivalry, but much prosperity. There had been peace on the frontiers. The company had kept off the Russians from trespassing. It had favored explorations and polar expeditions, and hoped to complete the survey of the coast of the Polar Sea. The company had been at great charge to extend its establishments, and had made efforts for "the improvement and civilization of the country." Before the union of the companies the Russians and Americans

name

1 There is a singular coincidence in the na of this governor of a fur company, whose seal bore the legend, Pro Pelle Cutem, skin for skin.

His cousin, Robert Pelly, was for a time local governor. The company had also in its employ a Mr. Beaver and a Mr. Hunter.

had plied their enterprise with some success between Behring's Straits and the Mexican frontiers, including Astoria, and the North West Company had been sorely pressed. But now the Bay Company had strengthened itself on the Pacific, having sixteen establishments on the coast and sixteen in the near interior, several migratory and hunting parties, and six armed vessels, one a steamer, in the Pacific. With a view to a large agricultural settlement, Lord Selkirk's Red River colony had been planted, to be peopled by emigrants from Great Britain, and to draw in nåtives, with an aim to their civil, moral, and religious improvement, and to a large future export trade to the mother country. Selkirk's ownership had been extinguished by the company, and the result had been favorable. The population there was 2,000 whites and 3,000 natives and half-breeds, some of them substituting agriculture for hunting. Legal officers and courts were needed, and the company deserved the encouragement it would receive by a renewal of its privileges in the Indian Territory.

Accompanying this appeal from Governor Pelly in 1837 was a letter from the resident governor, George Simpson, reporting on the condition and state of trade in the Indian Territory previous to the license to the company. It had been a scene of lawlessness and outrage. Its Indian population was estimated at 120,000, and the liquor traffic had run riot in it. It was now tranquillized. The company derives very little benefit from the licensed. territory beyond being helped to a more peaceable possession of their own. The region principally lies west of the Rocky Mountains, the most valuable portion of it bordering upon the Pacific. The company has found difficulty and scant profit in holding it against the schemes of Russia and America. But national pride prompts it to such energetic measures that it "has compelled the American adventurers to withdraw." The company is pressing hard upon the Russians, though supported by their own government and by military guards. The loss and damage to the company from the Russians in 1834 amounted to £20,000. As the territory, by a convention, is opened to the United States as well as to British subjects, the license leaves competition open. Then "the company is now promoting discovery, science, and surveys, at great expense"!

The company succeeded in obtaining, under date of May 30, 1838, a renewal of its territorial license for twenty-one years, with a reservation to the queen of a right to plant distinct colonies upon any portion of it.

In the petition of the company just rehearsed a reference is made to the trouble it encountered in the management of the Red River Settlement, with its mixed population of 5,000 whites, Indians, and half-breeds; dropping a suggestion that as this involved an expense of £5,000, the company might look to the government to repay it. We take up this annoyance from the colonial enterprise at a later period.

On February 17, 1847, a petition and memorial came before the colonial secretary of state, urging complaints against the Hudson Bay Company. The principal agent in this movement was Mr. A. K. Isbister, signing in

behalf of himself and many others, as "natives of Rupert's Land," and their "fellow-countrymen, Indians and half-breeds." The complaint was, that, acting under a charter which many high legal authorities believed had lost its force, the company had set up a harsh administration and pursued a ruinous policy. By its exclusive trade with the Indians, greatly to their own injury, the company secured a princely revenue, believed to be annually a quarter of a million sterling, and perpetuated, without any improvement, the wandering, precarious, and barbarous life of the natives. It had not established church or school in its settlement, but had left all effort in this direction to charitable, missionary, and Wesleyan societies. It had neglected all measures on its own part, and opposed those of others, for opening up the country, and had done so in order to keep the land in its wilderness condition, though game was rapidly decreasing and the Indians were dying out under the curse of the liquor traffic. The company employed many ignorant and loose, demoralized characters as its agents. Though the company has an exclusive right of purchase, this does not impair the right of the natives to sell to whatever parties they please. Yet when for a higher price they try to sell their furs to others, the company seizes and confiscates the goods.

This complaining memorial was supported by another in French, signed by nine hundred and seventy-seven residents of the Red River Settlement. The Earl of Elgin, governor-general of Canada, was instructed by the secretary to investigate the grievances. Distance, formalities, and other difficulties caused great delay in the correspondence. To such reports and documents as Governor Pelly, in behalf of the company, offered to meet the allegations, Mr. Isbister replied, sentence by sentence, presenting new evidence. It appeared that eleven different partnerships in the fur trade had been pressing their operations in the region of the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific. They had all been crushed by or absorbed in the giant monopoly.

In following up the issue, five retired servants of the company, who had been in its employ from six to fifteen years, were put under question as to its conduct of its affairs. Their testimony was in the main unfavorable to the company, tending to show the oppressive, unjust, and mischievous results of its policy, which was alike wrongful to the natives, the mother country, and to unprivileged British subjects. If the company's grasp over the "Indian Territory" could be released, many great advantages would follow. It would induce settlements, occupy the sea-coasts, and revive the rich fisheries of salmon, porpoise, and seal. It would lead to the working of mines of copper, silver, and lead. Plantations and cultivated lands would flourish with agriculture. The natives would be helped, and there would be a good export trade. All these prospective advantages were withstood by the truculent course of the company.

Mr. Isbister, learning that the committee had applied for information to the governor of Canada, thought that the government intended to send

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commissioners to inquire and investigate on the ground. Being put on his guard, he wrote to Earl Grey that this would be wholly unsatisfactory, as the commissioners would be prejudiced by their necessary dependence upon the company for conveyance and support. Nor would the Indians be satisfied, as they would have to communicate their grievances only through the company's interpreters. The company will avail itself of all its devices and arbitrary means to shelter itself. Mr. Isbister proposes that at least there should attend the commissioners one person in the interest of the petitioners; the company being allowed the like privilege, if desired. Earl Grey applied to two British military officers, who successively for several months. had resided at Fort Garry, in 1847 and 1848. Their answers were full, hearty, and earnest in defence of the company, and even laudatory of it. The inference, of course, was that they were under its spell. Earl Grey warmly espoused the side of the company, not seeing fit to open the question of the validity of its charter, and declining to bring the petition of the aggrieved Red River settlers before Parliament. He signified to Mr. Isbister that he must assume the expense of a judicial process if he chose to have one.

In 1846 a body of five hundred British troops had been sent to the settlement as if to preserve order, and had been withdrawn after two years, when a squad of pensioners followed. Mr. Alexander Ross, who was in the settlement at the time, says there was no other apparent reason for these military precautions than "the unmeaning fuss and gasconade of the Americans about the Oregon question."1 Frequent references are found, in the occasions when the Bay Company was under the assaults of its opponents, to the valuable service it claimed to render to the British government in "resisting the encroachments of the Americans." The company was constantly alarmed by actual and threatened competition in the fur trade, first by parties of half-breeds and natives in its own settlements, and then by bold trespassers across the boundary line. Naturally enough, the jealousy of the company extended to trade and traffic in any articles within its own territories in which it was not itself a party. In the antagonism between it and the resident colonists represented by Mr. Isbister, we find the latter party fretting under the restrictions and impositions which prevented all expansion of the thrift and prosperity of the settlement. They complained that they really had no market for any surplus produce, and so had no motive to enterprise. The company had refused to export in its own ships - and no other ships were allowed in the bay - a quantity of tallow brought. to its depot by a settler. A half-breed and an Indian were forbidden to buy and sell furs in the colony. Vexations and annoyances of the most exasperating character were made to burden and depress the restive members of an isolated community at a time when, south of the boundary line, especially in Minnesota, American enterprise was advancing with giant strides. There had come into use in the settlement vast numbers of 1 Red River Settlement, p. 364.

vehicles of a peculiar construction, known as "Red River carts," rough, strong, and easily repaired, made wholly of wood, without a particle of metal. Long processions of these went out over the plains, in the great buffalo hunts, to bring home the hides and meat from the thousands of carcasses. What more natural than that these should pass the border at Pembina, and open a profitable international commerce? But then the bugbear of free competition with the "Yankees" in peltry presented itself as a warning. The intelligent Mr. Ross, while admitting that an allowance of free trade in furs would have been disastrous, as introducing strife, bloodshed, and ruin, however insists that buying and bartering ought to have been allowed between the Indians and the half-breeds. It was not strange that the Canadians in the settlement should have been in strong sympathy with their brethren in Canada during the so-called "Papineau Rebellion," and have hoped for its success. The half-breeds raised the Papineau standard on the plains, where it hung for many years.

Mr. Isbister persevered in his efforts with government officials in England, especially with the Colonial Secretary, in order to bring the griev ances of his fellow-colonists before the public, and to secure a redress. Of course, this involved a repetition of charges and complaints against the Bay Company, beginning with a denial of the validity of its charter, and covering all its policy as to trade, its utter neglect of all measures for edu cating and civilizing and converting the natives, and its actual reduction of many of them to abject destitution. He always came to this work of antagonism well fortified with facts and documents. Particularly did he controvert the pleas advanced on the side of the company: that the territories under its jurisdiction were wholly unsuitable for agricultural settlements; were barren, destitute of wood for building and fuel, and locked in ice and snow during so large a part of the year that grains and garden crops would not ripen. The company was too strong under its patronage to be worsted by all his appeals and exposures. The authorities would not through legal advisers open the question of the validity of the company's charter, and any complaint of mal-administration under it must be brought by complainants, at their own charges, before the proper tribunal. As we shall see, the solution of the problem came in due season from a proper source in Canada.

The colonists whom Lord Selkirk had led to his settlement, and their descendants, were Scotch Presbyterians. As such, they had what they felt to be a serious and an embittered grievance in their relations with the Bay Company. Selkirk had pledged to them that he would secure, to accompany them in their exile, a minister of their own kirk, and who should officiate in the Gaelic tongue. The promise was not fulfilled. In the buffetings and disasters which the exiles encountered during many years, shut in by a cordon of ice and savagery, with fighting and famine and wandering, they sorely missed the cheer and solace of their familiar ministrations. After Selkirk's death they thought the company had assumed his promises