TOPICS OF THE DAY.
HOW THE COLONIAL OFFICE DEALS WITH THE LANDS OF THE EMPIRE.
Tnn debate in the House of Commons at the close of last week concerns a great deal more than its ostensible subject, the lease of Vancouver's Island for eleven years to the Hudson's Bay Com- pany: the whole subject of our Colonial administration was really involved. The affair from which Mr. Christy and Mr. Gladstone took the official veil presents a monstrous expose of what can- not be called less than malversation—a malversation the more monstrous since it appears, on the face of it to be without the motives of ordinary corruption : it seems to be in sheer idleness or incompetency that Ministers have been proposing to give away the lands which the Crown holds in trust for the country ; sacri- ficing with those lands the commercial and political prospects of England on the Pacific. If you look at the map of North America, you will see West of the Rocky Mountains that vast tract called Oregon, which was go warmly contested between the English and Americans some years back. The English claimed it on the right of prior disco- very : Vancouver touched upon the coast before Lewis and Clarke descended the Columbia; and Mackenzie preceded them in tra- versing the country, though his route turned the Rocky Moun- tains far to the North. English subjects therefore trod the land before the Republicans ; whose early attempts at settlement failed. Very different, however, has been the recent history of the region, since it was finally divided between Great Britain and the United States : the English part remains a desert ; while the other part is already a " territory " annexed to the great Union, colonized, and provided with a form of govern- ment. The recently divided region therefore exhibits the most remarkable contrast in the progress achieved by the two sections of the same Anglo-Saxon race—the English and the American. A similar c.ontrast, we fear, might be observed along the boundary of the two states right across the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific ; but West of the Rocky Mountains it is glaring and unmistakeable.
There is something ominous in these contrasts. Is the British Empire declining ?
A vague sense of some want seems to have impressed itself on the statesman who had custody of this extensive region : like the unaffianced virgin with a heart to bestow, Lord Grey seems to have felt "an aching void" all in the Oregon so wide ; and he threw out hints that suitors would be welcome. So says Sir John Pelly in the official correspondence : so says Mr. Haves; and particularly his Lordship expressed a desire for the colonization of Vancouver's Island. But to whom does he intrust that con- fessedly important task ? There is a commercial company in North America, established ostensibly for the encouragement of discovery, but really for the trade in furs. The Company has a right to trade over a very ex- tensive region, and is bound to establish colonies. Two settle- ments have been established within its territory—one as a station, on Puget's Sound, to supply its outposts with a point d'appui, especially for provisions ; another forced upon the Company by the Earl of Selkirk, on the Red River, subsisting in spite of a treat- ment like that ascribed to stepmothers, and now represented in this country by a gentleman preferring grave accusations against the Company. The Company has protested against settlement, as adverse to the spread and multiplication of wild fur-bearing ani- mals; has distinguished itself by arbitrary rule ; is accused of in- flicting corporeal and even capital punishment without trial ; has directed its efforts to keep away settled industry, and has been conservative of that rudest social condition the hunting state. The rule of the Hudson's Bay Company in North America has been a gigantic burlesque on Charles Lamb's story of a house burned to roast a pig : the Company has used a vast tract of the Continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Columbia to the Icy Sea, as a preserve for the trade in fur skins. Such is the Company to which provident Lord Grey allots the colonization of Vancouver's Island.
The Company entered the field solely as applicant for a con-
firmation of its right to certain lands on the South point of Van- couver's Island; but when Lord Grey threw out a hint of colo- nization, the Chairman, Sir John Pelly, asked for "a grant of all the lands belonging to the British Crown in the Oregon terri- tory." This prodigious bold request seems to have positively alarmed Lord Grey ; who deprecated it, as "too extensive," "too large "; sending private as well as official notes to moderate the daring Chairman. At last, after a good deal of amusing coquetry on both sides, on the last day of July 1848, Lord Grey accepted the draft of a grant, conveying the island, with "the fishing of all aorta of fish in the seas," &c., and "all the royalties of the seas" "and mines royal," to the Hudson's Bay Company, as "the true end absolute lords and proprietors of the same territories." There is one. condition—" that the said Governor and Company shall establish upon the said island a settlement or settlements of resi- deut colonists, emigrants from our United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, or from other our dominions." And the Crown reserves a right to repurchase the island at the expiration of the Company's general charter—eleven years hence. Lord Grey, ta- king the stewardlike view of his duties, hinted at the payment of a rent and royalty on coal, such as Mr. Wise pays on the coal- 1111.11, es of Labuan; but Sir John scouted the idea of paying any- '444' in money. So the coal-rent was given up; the draft was
accepted, the grant settled, and all seemed to be quietly arranged. Unluckily, however, some curious person heard of this gift of land, for colonization, to an anti-colonizing company ; the project got wind, and it is dragged to light in Parliament.
In Parliament! Ministers, therefore, could not evade the ques- tion. They were obliged to cast about at least for something to "say." So, obedient Mr. Hawes was put forward, to explain how anxious Lord Grey was to colonize—only no adventurous persons would come forward to offer except this Hudson's Bay Company ; and bow the charges against the Company were to be investigated—by an officer unaer the Company ! Mr. Hawes drew forth Mr. Gladstone, with a copious, clear, and substantial state- ment of the past history of the Company, and a masterly exposi- tion of the way in which our Colonial administrators misappropriate the lands of the empire, while they neglect the great schemes of colonization which were once in the mouths of some among them. It became necessary to "say" something more, and accordingly Lord John put forward Mr. Charles Buller. It was Mr. Buller's first reappearance on a Colonial field since he had abdicated his leading position as a speaker on Colonial subjects, in order, as be calls it, to "potter on" in Poor-law administration; and he seems thoroughly wedded to his "second manner "—the pottering. Unable quite to forget himself, he could not help reviving his old symphony and song on "extensive colonization," but applied it in the most amusing manner to Vancouver's Island : as we have such vast fields which are more acces- sible and more desirable to colonize, he argued, Vancouver's Island, distant and inconvenient, must wait for fifty years, except for such eleemosynary colonization as it may obtain from the Hudson's Bay Company. Mr. Buller's mingled cantilena, new and old, was painfully ludicrous; it was like the wood-notes wild of the starling mingled with the Billingsgate dialect taught by the bird-fancier—a depraved speech, learned only in the cage —quaint, but not impressive. The adverse feeling on all sides of the House called for something more : the Commons felt that the Administration was bringing a discredit upon the country ; and for once a patriotic, a national feeling, showed itself. The Pre- mier rose; though only to complain that the discussion had taken Ministers by surprise, and to reiterate some of Mr. Hawes's as- surances. The subject—the malversation of Colonial lands—was not touched : the sole effect of the defence was to exhibit three quondam advocates of Colonial reform—to say nothing of Lord Grey—defending the largest job that has disgraced our public administration for many years. The feeling in the House was too strong for Ministers ; and on Monday the Premier announced that the question would be re- ferred to a separate authority for a judgment on the expediency of the grant and the validity of the stipulations binding the Com- pany to colonize. Referred to whom ? To the new Committee of the Privy Council—that is, to Sir James Stephen—to the Anti- Colonial Minister, who has been released from all shadow of re- sponsibility by his elevation to the honorary position on the judg- ment-seat of the Privy Council ; where he sits exalted, snuffing the incense of the worship paid to him by Lord Grey. Examined by the Select Committee on the Miscellaneous Estimates, Earl Grey spoke in terms which indicated that be had hung in the most helpless dependence on the Anti-Colonial Under-Secretary. We had often asserted that Mr. Stephen contrived to accumulate great power in his own hands by retaining exclusive knowledge of Colonial affairs, and that he was the arbiter of many matters which were ostensibly decided by the Cabinet Minister : Lord Grey corroborates that representation- " It is hardly possible," he says, " to describe the extreme inconvenience to which I was exposed in the course of last autumn when Mr. Stephen was suddenly taken ill, and I could not obtain his advice and assistance in various matters, of which he alone had any knowledge." * • • " With respect to many of the papers that came before Mr. Stephen, being perfectly acquainted with the pre- vious history of the affair, he could at once give his advice as to what ought to be done."
So the united statesmen of the Ministry, detected in the at- tempt to misappropriate the imperial lands, totally at sea in their statesmanship, turn round in utter helplessness to their old fami- liar to tell them " what ought to be done." They appeal from Parliament to Sir James Stephen, assuming that the judgment will be accepted as final!
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