We have shown, by reference to the capital stock of the Hudson’s Bay Company, that, in 1821, it was counted at £200,000. From this sum ten per cent., or £20,000, was set apart as a sinking fund to oppose any fur company or traders on the west side of the mountains, and an equal sum for the same purpose on the east.
This western amount, being placed under the direction of Dr. Tolmie and his successors, produced in seven years £11,000 sterling, equal to $53,240. This transaction does not appear, from the testimony adduced in the case, to have interfered in the least with the fur trade carried on at these stations, and by the same officers or clerks of the Hudson’s Bay Company; hence, we are unable, from the whole catalogue of twenty-seven witnesses in the case, to find out who is to receive this nice little sum of $1,168,000 or £240,000 – only £40,000 more than the mother had to trade upon when she produced this beautiful full-grown child, the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, – having had an abortion on the other side of the continent in the loss, without pay, of a large portion of the Red River or Selkirk country. Uncle Sam was ungenerous there.
This is truly an acre of wonders, and this Hudson’s Bay Company and its productions are entitled to some consideration for their ingenuity, if not for their honesty. It will be interesting to look at our British cousins and see what is said about this “itself and its other self.” Mr. Fitzgerald says, page 260: “It is a matter of importance to know whether the Hudson’s Bay Company is about to submit itself and its other self– the Puget Sound Association – to the same regulations which are to be imposed on other settlers of Vancouver Island and British Columbia.”
On page 287, he further states: “The Oregon Territory was peopled, under the influence of the company, with subjects of the United States. (Since Writing the former chapter, I have heard this account given of the conduct of the Hudson’s Bay Company, in regard to the Oregon boundary, which offers still stronger ground for inquiry. The country south of the 49th parallel, it seems, was hunted up – therefore the posts of the Hudson’s Bay Company were become of no value at all. By annexing all that country to the United States, and inserting in the treaty a clause that the United States should pay the company for all its posts if it turned them out, the company were able to obtain from the Americans a large sum of money for what would have been worth nothing had the territory remained British.) That lost us the boundary of the Columbia River. That is one specimen of the colonization of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The boundary westward from the Lake of the Woods, we have seen, gave to the United States land from which the company was engaged, at the very time, in driving out British subjects, on the plea that it belonged to the company; and now that the boundary has been settled only a few years, we learn that the settlers on our side are asking the United States to extend her government over that country.”
If this does not show a clear case of abortion on the part of that honorable Hudson’s Bay Company east of the Rocky Mountains, tell us what does. But it is interesting to trace a little further the British ideas and pretensions to this Pacific coast. Our British author says, page 288: —
“Make what lines you please in a map and call them boundaries, but it is mockery to do so as long as the inhabitants are alienated from your rule, as long as you have a company in power whose policy erases the lines which treaties have drawn.
“Forasmuch, then, as these things are so, it becomes this country [Great Britain] to record an emphatic protest against the recent policy of the Colonial Office in abandoning the magnificent country on the shores of the Pacific Ocean to the Hudson’s Bay Company.
“The blindest can not long avoid seeing the immense importance of Vancouver Island to Great Britain. Those who, two years ago [1846], first began to attract public attention to this question, are not the less amazed at the unexpected manner and rapidity with which their anticipations have been realized.
“Six months ago it was a question merely of colonizing Vancouver Island; now it is a question involving the interests of the whole of British North America, and of the empire of Great Britain in the Pacific Ocean.”
It is always more or less difficult to trace the course of a false or fictitious object. It becomes peculiarly so when two objects of the same character come up; the one, by long practice and experience, assuming a fair and honorable exterior, having talent, experience, and wealth; the other, an illegitimate production, being called into existence to cripple the energies of two powerful nations, and living under the supreme control of the body, having acquired its position through the ignorance of the nations it seeks to deceive. It is out of the question to separate two such objects or associations. The one is the child of the other, and is permitted to exist while the object to be accomplished remains an opponent to the parent association.
The opposition to the fur monopoly having ceased west of the Rocky Mountains, a new element of national aggrandizement and empire comes within the range of this deceitful and grasping association. Its child is immediately christened and set to work under its paternal eye. We have the full history of the progress made by this Mr. Puget Sound Agricultural Company in the testimony of the twenty-seven witnesses summoned to prove his separate existence from that of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
We find, in tracing the existence of these two children of the British empire in North America, that they have established themselves in an island on the Pacific coast called Vancouver. In this island they are more thrifty and better protected than they were in the dominions of Uncle Samuel. Notwithstanding they are comfortably located, and have secured the larger part of that island and the better portion of British Columbia, there is occasionally a British subject that grumbles a little about them in the following undignified style: —
“If the company were to be destroyed to-morrow, would England be poorer? Would there not rather be demanded from the hands of our own manufacturers ten times the quantity of goods which is sent abroad, under the present system, to purchase the skins?” My dear sir, this would make the Indians comfortable and happy. “We boast [says this Englishman] that we make no slaves, none at least that can taint our soil, or fret our sight; but we take the child of the forest, whom God gave us to civilize, and commit him, bound hand and foot, to the most iron of all despotisms —a commercial monopoly.
“Nor, turning from the results of our policy upon the native population, to its effect upon settlers and colonists, is there greater cause for congratulation.
“The system which has made the native a slave is making the settler a rebel.
“Restrictions upon trade, jealousy of its own privileges, interference with the rights of property, exactions, and all the other freaks in which monopoly and despotism delight to indulge, have, it appears, driven the best settlers into American territory, and left the rest, as it were, packing up their trunks for the journey.”
This, so far as relates to the proceedings, policy, and influence of that company upon the settlement of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, is verified by the facts now existing in those British colonies. Their whole system is a perfect mildew and blight upon any country in which they are permitted to trade or to do business.
We have little or no expectation that any thing we may write will affect in the least the decision of the commissioners, whose business it is to decide this Puget Sound Company’s case; but, as a faithful historian, we place on record the most prominent facts relating to it, for the purpose of showing the plans and schemes of an English company, who are a nuisance in the country, and a disgrace to the nation under whose charters they profess to act. Up to the time we were permitted to examine the testimony they have produced in support of their monstrous claims, we were charitable enough to believe there were some men in its employ who could be relied upon for an honest and truthful statement of facts in relation to the property and improvements for which these claims are made; but we are not only disappointed, but forced to believe the truth is not in them, – at least in any whose testimony is before us in either case. Our English author says: —
“It does not appear that the interposition of ‘an irresponsible company’ can be attended with benefit to the colony. – A company whose direction is in