The Duke of Newcastle explained on Thursday the objects for
which the rights of the Hudson's Bay Company, ex- tending over a territory '400,000 miles larger than Europe within the Vistula, have been transferred like a private estate. The true purchasers, it appears, are persons interested in Canada, aided for the moment by the International Financial Society, and they will settle the Southern portion of the ter- ritory, grant mining leases, and erect a line of telegraph be- tween the Atlantic and Pacific, for which service Her Majesty's Government are to grant them a million acres in Crown lands. The Duke seems perfectly satisfied with the transaction, and so far there is no objection to its legality, but he did not meet the true point. The Hudson's Bay Company exercised manysovereign powers, keeping settlers forinstance, out of their dominions. Have these been transferred ? If so, then we deny the validity of the transaction unless completed under the sanction of an Act of Parliament. Delegatus non potest delegare, and the settler who disobeys the local laws of the new Company, and is punished for so doing, may claim and obtain damages in England. The argument that as one share could be sold, so all could be sold, is a quibble merely. Suppose Louis Napoleon had bought them all. The grant, too, of a million of acres for a mere line of telegraph not nearly so long as the Indian triangular line at least sounds extravagant, and the whole matter ought to be thoroughly explained by a speech in the interests of the Empire, and not merely of this or that new society.
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