Hudson’s Bay Company’s charter; and to urge the opening up of the country for settlement.  But, above all, a committee of the British House of Commons took evidence that year upon all sorts of questions concerning the North-West, and particularly its suitability for settlement, much of which was valueless owing to its untruth.  Nevertheless, the Imperial Committee, after weighing all the evidence, reported that the Territories were fit for settlement, and that it was desirable that Canada should annex them, and hoped that the Government would be enabled to bring in a bill to that end at the next session of Parliament.  Five years later, the Duke of Newcastle, who became Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1859, and accompanied the Prince of Wales to Canada as official adviser in 1860, having in his possession the petition of the Red River settlers, as printed by order of the Canadian Legislature, brought the matter up in a vigorous speech in the House of Lords, in which he expressed his belief that the Hudson’s Bay Company’s charter was invalid, though, he added, “it would be a serious blow to the rights of property to meddle with a charter two hundred years old.  But it might happen,” he continued, “in the inevitable course of events, that Parliament would be asked to annul even such a charter as this, in order, as set forth in the Queen’s Speech, that all obstacles to an unbroken chain of loyal settlements, stretching from ocean to ocean, should be removed.”  British Columbia, which had become a Province in 1858, has now urging the Imperial Government with might and main to furnish a waggon-road and telegraph line to connect her, not only with the Territories and Canada, but with the United Empire.  She was met by the stiffest of opposition, the opposition of a very old corporation strongly entrenched in the governing circles of both parties.  But the clamour of British Columbia was in the air, and her suggestions, hotly opposed by the Company, had been brought before the House of Lords by another peer.  In the discussion which followed, the Duke of Newcastle declared that “it seemed monstrous that any body of gentlemen should exercise fee-simple rights which precluded the future colonization of that territory, as well as the opening of lines of communication through it.”  The Minister’s idea at the time seemed to be to cancel the charter, and to concede proprietary rights around fur posts only, together with a certain money payment, considerably less, it appears, than what was ultimately agreed upon.

The Hudson’s Bay Company, alarmed at the outlook and the attitude of the Colonial Secretary, offered their entire interests and belongings, trade and territorial, to the Imperial Government for a million and a half pounds sterling, an offer which the Duke was disposed to accept, but which was unfortunately declined by Mr. Gladstone, then Chancellor of the Exchequer.  The Duke, who had resigned his office in 1864, died in October following, and in the meantime a change