The Board Room, Hudson's Bay House, London.
To anticipate events, it may here be remarked that this license expired in 1842, but prior to its expiration an extension was granted at the close of the first year of the reign of her present Majesty,[111] for a further term of twenty-one years. By virtue of these licenses the Company was granted exclusive trade in the Indian territories west of the Rocky Mountains. It must be borne in mind, and will be pointed out in a subsequent chapter, that it was of the utmost moment for Great Britain to obtain a standing in Oregon and on the Columbia River,[112] and the licenses were framed to this great and desirable end.
Although, as has been shown, the North-West partners had made great efforts and borne great sacrifices, to maintain the trade on the Pacific, they were contending against great odds. The Russian establishments at Norfolk Sound, and at other places on the coast, even so far south as California, came to share in a virtual monopoly with the Americans, who, after the Treaty of Ghent, began to send ships from Boston to New York. The amalgamation of 1821 came about, and the Hudson's Bay Company, invigorated by the infusion of new blood, believed it their duty to seek to regain the trade. They therefore set to work to re-establish British influence on the Pacific.
It was no easy task. The Russians had gained a firm foothold, and the Americans paused at no form of competition, nor any method by which they might secure their ends. The natives had already become debauched and now their debauchery spread from tribe to tribe, rendering dealings with them difficult and formidable. Serious losses, both of lives and property, were sustained through their savage attacks on the Company's agents and trading posts. But the work was in the hands of strong, able, and temperate men, who knew what the situation required of them and did not shrink from meeting it fully and fearlessly. By tact and vigorous measures the natives were restrained; at great expenditure of money and patience, order was restored; and in ten years time the Company occupied the whole country between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific. It maintained six permanent establishments on the coasts, sixteen in the interior, and several movable posts and migratory brigades. By 1835 it had a fleet of six armed vessels, one of them propelled by steam, on the Pacific. Fort Vancouver, its principal entrepôt on the Columbia River, was surrounded by large pasture and grain farms, maintaining large herds of horses and cattle, and was a profitable and growing establishment.
It was a long time since the Company had cut any considerable figure in international politics, but with the extraordinary growth of the American States and the increase of the fur traffic of the Russians, contemporary European publicists came again to speak of the prospect of trouble over the Company's rights and boundaries.
Claim of the United States to Red River.
Before this time there had arisen a cry, sedulously seconded by the Company's enemies, that the Red River region belonged to the United States. Nothing can be clearer than that it was never for a moment contemplated either by the British or American Government, that any of the Hudson's Bay lands, or any of the waters running into Hudson's Bay, would be included in the lines assigned as the boundaries between the possessions of Great Britain and those of the States. It is sufficiently demonstrated by the treaty concluded with America in 1794 that such an idea never existed in the minds of the negotiators. By the third article of that treaty, which permits the most perfect freedom of communication and intercourse between the subjects of both nations throughout their respective dominions, an exception is made of the country within the limits of the Hudson's Bay Company, to be ascertained, of course, in conformity to their charter from which the Americans are expressly excluded. The terms of the treaty concluded in 1783 with the United States show the express intentions of both nations to have been that the northern boundary of the United States should not, in any part, extend farther north than the River St. Lawrence, or the lakes and streams which feed or fall into it.
The unhappy feature of the matter was that a great part of the second article of the treaty of 1783 was drawn up in complete ignorance of the geography of the country. It is so full of contradictions that it became impossible afterwards to lay down a line which should follow that article literally. In this dilemma the only fair method of solving the difficulty was to return to the principles which governed the framing of the article.
