“There is a strong inducement to discourage the immigration of independent settlers; first, because when all the colonists are in the position of their own servants, they will be able much more readily to prevent interference with the fur trade; and secondly, because the presence of private capital in the island could only tend to diminish their own gains, derived from the export of agricultural produce.
“And, on the other hand, there will be every possible discouragement to emigrants of the better class to settle in a colony where a large part of the country will be peopled only by the lowest order of workmen, where they may have to compete with the capital of a wealthy company, and that company not only their rival in trade, but at the same time possessed of the supreme power, and of paramount political influence in the colony.
“There is a reason, more important than all, why the Hudson’s Bay Company will never be able to form a colony. An agricultural settlement they may establish; a few forts, where Scotchmen will grumble for a few years before they go over to the Americans, but never a community that will deserve the name of a British colony. They do not possess public confidence.
“But the Hudson’s Bay Company – the colonial office of this unfortunate new colony —has positive interests antagonistic to those of an important settlement.
“It is a body whose history, tendency, traditions, and prospects are equally and utterly opposed to the existence, within its hunting-grounds, of an active, wealthy, independent, and flourishing colony,” (we Americans say settlements) “with all the destructive consequences of ruined monopoly and wide-spread civilization.”
Need we stop to say the above is the best of British testimony in favor of the position we have assumed in relation to a company who will cramp and dwarf the energies of their own nation to increase the profits on the paltry capital they have invested.
Have the Americans any right to believe they will pursue any more liberal course toward them than they have, and do pursue toward their countrymen? As this writer remarks, “civilization ruins their monopoly.” The day those two noble and sainted women, Mrs. Spalding and Mrs. Whitman, came upon the plains of the Columbia, they could do no less than allow England’s banner to do them reverence, for God had sent and preserved them, as emblems of American civilization, religious light, and liberty upon this coast. One of them fell by the ruthless hand of the sectarian savages, pierced by Hudson’s Bay balls from Hudson’s Bay guns. The other was carried, in a Hudson’s Bay boat, to the protecting care of the American settlement; and for what purpose? That the savage might remain in barbarism; that the monster monopoly might receive its profits from the starving body and soul of the Indian; that civilization and Christianity, and the star of empire might be stayed in their westward course.
Not yet satisfied with the blood of sixteen noble martyrs to civilization and Christianity, quick as thought their missives are upon the ocean wave. Wafted upon the wings of the wind, a foul slander is sent by the representatives of that monopoly all over the earth, to blast her (Mrs. Whitman’s) Christian and missionary character with that of her martyred husband. And why?
Because that husband had braved the perils of a winter journey to the capital of his country, to defeat their malicious designs, to shut up the country and forever close it to American civilization and religion. And now, with an audacity only equaled by the arch-enemy of God and man, they come to our government and demand five millions of gold for facilitating the settlement of a country they had not the courage or power to prevent.
This, to a person ignorant of the peculiar arrangements of so monstrous a monopoly, will appear strange – that they should have an exclusive monopoly in trade in a country, and have not the courage or power to prevent its settlement, especially when such settlement interferes with its trade. So far as American territory was concerned, they were only permitted to have a joint occupancy in trade. The sovereignty or right of soil was not settled; hence, any open effort against any settler from any country was a trespass against the rights of such settler. They could only enforce their chartered privileges in British territory. The country, under these circumstances, afforded them a vast field in which to combine and arrange schemes calculated to perpetuate their own power and influence in it. The natives of the country were their trading capital and instruments, ready to execute their will upon all opponents. The Protestant missionaries brought an influence and a power that at once overturned their licensed privileges in trade, because with the privilege of trade, they had agreed, in accepting their original charter, to civilize and Christianize the natives of the country. This part of their compact the individual members of the company were fulfilling by each taking a native woman, and rearing as many half-civilised subjects as was convenient. This had the effect to destroy their courage in any investigation of their conduct. As to their power, as we have intimated above, it was derived from the capacity, courage, prejudices, and ignorance of the Indians, which the American missionary, if let alone, would soon overcome by his more liberal dealings with them, and his constant effort to improve their condition, which, just in proportion as the Indians learned the value of their own productions and labor, would diminish the profits in the fur trade.
This increase of civilization and settlement, says chief-trader Anderson, “had been foreseen on the part of the company, and to a certain extent provided for. The cession of Oregon, under the treaty of 1846, and the consequent negotiations for the transfer to the American government of all our rights and possessions in their territory, retarded all further proceedings.”
In this statement of Mr. Anderson, and the statement of Mr. Roberts, an old clerk of the company, and from our own observations, this “foreseeing” on the part of the company was an arrangement with the Indians, and such as had been half civilized by the various individual efforts of the members and servants of the company, to so arrange matters that an exterminating war against the missionary settlements in the country should commence before the Mexican difficulty with the United States was settled.
This view of the question is sustained by the reply of Sir James Douglas to Mr. Ogden, by Mr. Ogden’s course and treatment of the Indians on his way up the Columbia River, his letters to Revs. E. Walker and Spalding, his special instructions to the Indians, and payment of presents in war materials for their captives, and the course pursued by Sir James Douglas in refusing supplies to the provisional troops and settlers, and the enormous supplies of ammunition furnished to the priests for the Indians during the war of 1847-8.
We are decidedly of the same opinion respecting that company as their own British writer, who, in conclusion, after giving us a history of 281 pages, detailing one unbroken course of oppression and cruelty to all under their iron despotism, says: —
“The question at issue is a serious one, – whether a valuable territory shall be given up to an irresponsible corporation, to be colonized or not, as it may suit their convenience; or whether that colonization shall be conducted in accordance with any principles which are recognized as sound and right?”
We can easily see the connection in the principle of right in paying any portion of either of the monstrous claims of that company, which never has been responsible to any civilized national authority.
“The foregoing exposure of the character and conduct of the company has been provoked. When doubts were expressed whether the company were qualified for fulfilling the tasks assigned to them by the Colonial Minister, and when they appealed to their character and history, it became right that their history should be examined, and their character exposed.
“The