THE HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY.
THE new proprietors of the North Pole seem to entertain the Asiatic idea that bigness is the equivalent of grandeur. When an ancient Rabbi wanted to raise the Hebrew conception Og, he declared that Moses, who was ten cubits high, taking an axe ten cubits long, leaped ten cubits into the air, and struck at the King of Bashan's ankle-joint. When a Hindoo rhapsodist wishes to send through a crowd a thrill of awe and reverence, he tells how Brahma wielded a spade millions -of miles long, and struck it into the earth to millions of times its length. The new directors of the Hudson's Bay Company are trying a precisely similar plan, dazzling the world which speculates with dimensions expressed in millions, the breadth of their territory, the extent of their mines, the vastness of the operations in which they are about to engage. Their territory covers hundreds of millions of acres,—as does the Sahara—they will introduce thousands of colonists ; their cash balance is already counted in hundreds of thousands; they are engaged in a contract in which they are to receive as a gift a million of acres. All their statements are in round numbers, and as far as the commercial transaction is concerned, we have no particular wish to contravene them. English investors run little risk, for they are seldom attracted by the mere bigness of anything, are, indeed, very apt to con- found size and unmanageability, to doubt whether a white elephant be so profitable a possession. The old Company, by preserving foxes, Indians, and beavers, paid an excellent divi- dend on 500,000/., and the new one may earn a more moderate one even on four times that sum. Five-sixths of their terri- tory is worth rather less than nothing per province, but even a remnant out of 1,400,000 square miles may be a magnificent property. Why people should be expected to settle in such a region, when Ohio, and Melbourne, and Otago are all open to their enterprise may be hard to imagine, but mankind have every taste, and it does not take many inhabitants in a country to pay a dividend on two millions. There is not a crop in the country, not even ice, which is far the most extensive, that will bear the expense of carriage ; but then settlers may, have means of their own, and choose the territory because there are bears to hunt. Grouse moors do not grow much, but they bear a rent. The mines are useless unless they are of precious metal, because the produce will cost its value in portage; but then gold may possibly be found. The certainties of which speculators talk do not exist, for the old revenue was paid by the beavers, and beavers and free colonization cannot exist together; but there is a fair chance of investors scraping together from different channels a reasonable dividend. Of course, if the company, in addition to all their functions, turn contractors, and make agreements for vast preemptions in settled districts, and build telegraphs, and enjoy concessions from Canada, and British Columbia, and Vancouver's Island, they may in the end reap a very large profit indeed, large enough to bear the losses they will assuredly incur if they set them- selves to carry out the grand project of an interoceanic rail- way. All that, however, is the shareholders' affair, and so long as the Company only state the truth, and keep their books in order, and obey their own bylaws, the public has nothing to do with them except wish success to an enterprise which will extend the area of civilization.
But there is one point on which the directors, so magnifi- cently frank on all others, are very carefully silent, and that is their political position within their territory. Are they simply owners, like, for example, the Duke of Sutherland in the shire of that name, or do they also, like the old East India Company, exercise sovereign power ? The Commission who in 1857 reported upon their territory declined to answer that question, and few have ever been able to see, much less to study, the charters of which Mr. Ellice used so proudly to speak. But it is absolutely certain that the old Company, with rights or without them, claimed and exercised sovereign though independent power. They tried and hung their subjects by courts which they framed, under rules which they made, through agents whom they appointed, and one of the best of whom was eulogized by Mr. Ellice as an individual who "had never seen a town," and was, therefore, free from town vices. Witness after witness testified to the exercise of judicial power extending to life and death; and Mr. Ellice himself admitted that, under the charter, the territory was "self-governed," which is his euphemism for irresponsibly governed by the Hudson's Bay Company, i.e., as he defined it, by "four or five gentlemen round a table." We quote his exact words:—" And the country has been governed, so far as the Hudson's Bay Company's territories are concerned, under those rights ; there has never been any other authority for the government of the country or for the administration ofjustice; it being always understood that the Crown took the power, if it should see right, in the act enabling it to grant the licence, to constitute an independent magisterial power, which it has never exercised. If you are to look to the nice rules which we think essential in the courts of justice in England, it is very difficult to satisfy gentlemen that there is any adminis- tration of justice, when it must be necessarily of so rude a description as that exercised under the powers of the Hud- son's Bay Company; but in all these societies, wherever they have existed, (and I have known a great many of them), I believe that the administration of government and of justice has been conducted in such a manner as to satisfy the inha- bitants generally, and to satisfy the Government at home also, that no act of gross injustice or exceptional mal-administra- tion has taken place. You have as good an administration of justice and government as under the circumstances you can obtain." Moreover, the company claims the right of taxa- tion. "There is," says Sir G. Simpson, "an import duty of 4 per cent. chargeable upon all goods imported into the settle- ment of Red River." A governing power which can preven residence, which can hang without appeal, and which can levy taxes, is, if words have any meaning, a political power. It is true the Attorney-General (Sir R. Bethel!) thought that the charters did not cover the powers exercised; but there is the evidence of the precedent., testified to not by the ene- mies, but by the officers of the Company. The Company is quasi-sovereign, as, like all the companies of the same date, it was doubtless intended to be, and the only remedy against its acts is by a long litigation before the Privy Council sitting five thousand miles away. It is these powers, as well as the ownership of the coil and the exclusive traffic which the Company has conveyed, and it is these powers which, as we contend, render the sanction of Parliament necessary before the conveyance can be effectual. Without it they cannot be delegated, and the colonists who should resist by force officers appointed by the Company, would not be engaged in an insurrection. The quibble that the -Company has not been changed, that its shares only have been sold, is a quibble merely, good enough, perhaps, in com- merce, which deals with things, but of no import whatever in politics, which are concerned with people. As well might a politician allege that the British Cabinet was unchanged because, though a new personage occupied every office, the powers of those officers remained intact.
The truth is, we believe, that the Colonial Office is at the bottom of the affair. It was absolutely necessary that the country should be thrown open, and that communication should be established between Canada and the settlements on the At- lantic. To have suspended all sovereign rights and terminated the charter, would have involved an application to Parliament for a grant in compensation, and, perhaps, some annual outlay for the establishment of a new colony. The Duke of New- castle, to avoid those nuisances, has tempted a new company into the field by concessions, and seeks to civilize this vast region through an agency independent alike of Parliament and the taxpayers. He may be right in his end, but the means require defence. It is not even yet quite certain that a company partially unshackled by English rules may not be the very best machine to foster the growth of a young colony on an unpropitious soil. The colonists, it is true, never think so, declaring that such companies are ruled by the spirit of trade much more than by imperial considerations, and Parlia- ment did not think so when it subjected the East India Com- pany to the authority of a Board of Control. Still, the Duke of Newcastle may be able to prove that the colonists and Parlia- ment are equally wrong, and that a power of control still re- mains in his hands sufficient to furnish the new colonists with some channel of appeal to the Crown, some authority over whom Parliament may exercise a supervision, however perfunctory or imperfect. But then he should produce those proofs, and obtain the sanction of Parliament, not revolutionize the affairs and position of a great colony by a purely executive agreement. Suppose the new colonists should quarrel with the Americans, is the Governor whom the Cabinet does not appoint, and Parliament cannot censure, to be responsible or not ? If not, who is? or is this country to be called on for troops, and, perhaps, involved in a war by an official exer- cising political authority, yet not as much in the service of the Crown as the officials of the East India Company were ? This practice of evading the just authority of Parliament is becoming a little too frequent. Lord Palmerston permits Queen's officers to organize an administration for China with- out losing rank or promotion, and then says that the Govern- ment has nothing to do with the Emperor of China's servants, and the Duke of Newcastle resettles the government, the status, and the character of a territory of imperial size, across which the great route of the world must one day run, with- out either explaining his acts or asking previous sanction. An empire is founded under pretence of letting English- men do as they like, and a colony sold under the pretext that it is a private estate.
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