It may be added here as a sample of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s economy in detail—that Fort Victoria was built without the driving of a single nail. Wooden pegs were used. After the relinquishment of Oregon, the old Okanogan-Kamloops trail could be no longer used. Anderson of Fort Alexandria in New Caledonia succeeded in 1845-46 in finding and cutting a new trail down the Fraser to Langley and Victoria. This was the trail that later developed into the famous Cariboo Road of the miners and of which ruins may still be seen clinging to the precipices above the Fraser like basket work, the strands of the basket bridges being huge cedar logs mortised in places for a depth of hundreds of feet. Except where the embankment has crumbled beneath the timber work, Anderson’s old fur trail is still used to enter Cariboo. From 1846, one Joseph McKay becomes chief clerk under Chief Factor Douglas of Victoria. Indians brought first word of the famous coal beds of North Vancouver Island. Hence the building of Fort Rupert on Beaver Harbor in ’43.
And now occurs the fine play of the Company’s rare diplomacy. Rumors of gold in California are arousing the fever that is to result in the pell-mell stampede of the famous ’49. At any time, similar discoveries may bring a stampede to the North. No one knew better than the Company those Indian legends of hidden minerals in the Rockies, and when colonists came there would be an end to the fur trade. Did the Company, then—as is often charged—conceal knowledge of precious minerals in its territory? Not at all. It simply let the legends slumber. Its business was not mining. It was fur trading, and the two were utterly hostile.
Came Sir John Pelly, Governor of the Company in England, and Sir George Simpson, Governor of the Company in America, to the Cabinet Minister of Great Britain with a cock-and-bull story of the dangers of an American, not invasion, but deluge such as had swept away British sovereignty in Oregon. What, they ask, is to hinder American colonists rolling in a tide north of the boundary and so establishing rights of possession there as they had in Oregon. Any schoolboy could have guessed the trend of such argument, and let us not blame the Hudson’s Bay Company for cupidity. It was a purely commercial organization, not a patriotic or charitable association; and it pursued its aims just as commercial organizations have pursued their aims since time began—namely, by grabbing all they could get. To talk cupidity is nonsense. Cupidity, according to the legal rules of the game, is the business of a money-getting organization. Not the cupidity of the Hudson’s Bay Company was to blame for the extraordinary episodes in its history. Place the blame where it belongs—at the door of an ignorance as profound as it was indifferent on the part of the British statesmen who dealt with colonial affairs.
My Lord Grey listens to the warning of this impending disaster. What would the Hudson’s Bay Company suggest to counteract such danger? Modestly, generously, with a largesse of self-sacrifice that is appalling to contemplate, the two Hudson’s Bay governors offer to accept—accept, mind you, not ask—the enormous burden of looking after “all England’s possessions in North America.” As a quid pro quo, it is a mere detail of course—they would expect exclusive monopoly of trade in the same regions. It is said when Gladstone, now rising to fame, heard the terms of this offer, he burst out in a loud laugh that brought the blush of misunderstood modesty to the brow of the two Hudson’s Bay men. The Company dropped the subject like a hot coal for the matter of a few months to let the coal cool. Then they came at it again with an aggrieved air, demanding government protection for their interests on the Pacific Coast. Earl Grey tumbled into the trap with a celerity that was beautiful. He answered “that the Company must protect themselves.” Exactly the answer expected. Then if “the Company must protect themselves from dangers of American encroachment, they ask for exclusive monopoly for purposes of colonization in—Vancouver Island.”
For two years furious waxed debate in Parliament and out on this request of the Company. The Hudson’s Bay Company as a colonizer was a new rôle. Mr. Isbister, descendant of Red River people and now a barrister in London, has something to say as to how the Hudson’s Bay Company act in the colony of Red River, and Mr. Gladstone in Parliament openly and hotly opposes the request on the ground that a company which had a charter of exclusive monopoly for two hundred years entitling it to colonize and had done nothing, had proved itself incompetent as a colonizer.
Furious waxed the debate, but the one thing lacking in all long-drawn out debates is a basis of fact. Only the Hudson’s Bay Company possessed the facts about this West Coast. Reports of such government emissaries as Gordon of the Squadron were worse than useless. The opponents were working in the dark. In the House of Commons were several shareholders of the Hudson’s Bay Company, chief among them, Ellice, son of the old Nor’Wester.
The request was officially granted in January, 1849, but with such absurd restrictions attached, that any one possessing the slightest knowledge of West Coast conditions must have been aware that the alleged aim to colonize was but a stalking horse for other designs. The Company was to be permitted to retain only one-tenth of the proceeds from its land sales. The other nine-tenths were to be spent improving the island. What bona fide colonization company would accept such conditions? Ten per cent. of land sales would not suffice to pay for advertising. If no settlement were made, the grant was to be revoked in five years. To the colonists, land was to be sold at £1 ($5.00) an acre. In Oregon, the colonist could have 640 acres for nothing. For every one hundred acres sold at $5.00 an acre, the buyer was bound by covenant to bring to Vancouver Island at his own expense three families, or six single persons. Last of all and most absurd of all, at the end of five or ten years, the Government might buy back the Island by paying to the Company all it had expended. Another point—but this was not in the official terms—retired servants of the Hudson’s Bay Company might buy the land at a few shillings an acre. Looking squarely at this extraordinary contract, only one of two conclusions can be reached: either the ignorance of conditions was so dense that dynamite could not have driven a hole through it, or there was no intention whatever of colonizing Vancouver Island, the real design being twofold: (1) on the part of the Government to keep this remote region securely British, for Mormons had talked of escaping persecution by going to Vancouver Island; (2) on the part of the Company, to hold colonizing in its own control to be forwarded or retarded as suited its interests. The Company declared that from the time Lord Grey framed the conditions of the grant, they knew the scheme was foredoomed to failure. This did not prevent them accepting the terms; but the fur traders were too tactful to suggest one of their own men as governor of the new colony. Earl Grey suggested Richard Blanchard, a barrister, as governor; and Blanchard foolishly accepted the appointment without a single stipulation as to residence, salary, land, or staff. Pelly talked unofficially of the governor being given one thousand acres, but when Blanchard reached Victoria he found that Chief Factor Douglas had received no instructions. The governor of the colony was to have only the use of the one thousand acres, not the possession. One year of such empty honors satisfied Blanchard’s ambitions. He had neither house nor salary, subjects nor staff, and came home to England in 1851, £1,000 the poorer. James Douglas, the Chief Factor, was at once appointed Governor of Vancouver Island.
The record of the colony is not a part of the history of the English Adventurers, and therefore is not given here. How many colonists were sent out, I do not know; exclusive of the Company’s servants, certainly not more than a dozen; including the Company’s servants, not more than three hundred in ten years. Provisions must be bought from the Company. Produce must be sold to the Company—a one-sided performance that easily accounted for the discontent expressed in a memorial sent home with Blanchard when he retired.
The man, who had hauled fish and furs in New Caledonia at $300 a year, was now governor of Vancouver Island. James Douglas received his commission in September of 1851. Five years ago, he had been compelled to choose between loyalty to McLoughlin, and loyalty to his Company. He took his choice, was loyal to his Company and had been promoted to a position worth $15,000 a year. Events were now coming that would compel Douglas to choose between his country and his Company. Wisely, he chose the former, sold out all interests in the Hudson’s Bay Company, received knighthood in ’59 and died at Victoria full of honors in 1877. Upon renewing the grant of Vancouver Island to the Company in 1854, the English Government requested Douglas to establish representative government in the colony. This was not easy. Electors were scarce, consisting mainly of retired Hudson’s Bay officers; and when Douglas met the first parliament of the Island on August 12, 1856, it consisted of less than a dozen members; all directly connected with the Hudson’s Bay Company; so that the governor was able to report to England that “the opening” passed off quietly without exciting “interest among the lower orders”—upon which Bancroft, the American, wants to know “who the lower orders were” unless “the pigs on the parson’s pig farm.”