The surrender of Territorial Rights.
These proposals were carefully considered by Sir Edmund Head and his colleagues, and it was decided at a meeting on the 13th of April to accept them, subject to certain alterations. It was urged that the amount of payments within fifty years should either not be limited or else placed at the sum of £1,000,000 sterling, instead of a quarter of that sum. The Company also suggested that a grant be made to it of five thousand acres of wild land for every fifty thousand acres sold by the Crown.
In the meantime the Duke of Newcastle had been succeeded in the Colonial Secretaryship by Mr. Cardwell, who on the 6th of June wrote to say that he could not entertain the amendments of the Company. For several months nothing was done, but in December the Honourable Adventurers again met and again showed their desire for an amicable and reasonable arrangement. They offered to accept £1,000,000 for the territory which they then defined, and which was substantially in extent the whole region granted them in the Charter of Charles II. In 1865 the Hon. George Brown went to England to come to terms over the proposed transfer, but without success.
America purchases Alaska.
The charter of the Russian Company was about to expire. It had underlet to the Hudson's Bay Company all its franchise on the mainland between 54° 40' and Mount St Elias; and now it was proposed that an American Company, holding direct from the Russian Government, should be substituted, and it seemed to the Americans a good opportunity to organize a fur-trading company to trade between the States and the Russian possessions in America. But before the matter could mature, the American and Russian Governments interposed with a treaty, by which Alaska was ceded to the States for $7,200,000 in gold. Few treaties have ever been carried out in so simple a manner. Russia was glad to be rid of her possessions in North America. The sum of $7,000,000 was originally agreed upon; but when it was understood that a fur company and an ice company enjoyed monopolies under the existing government, it was decided to extinguish these for the additional sum.
On 1st July, 1867, the Confederation of the scattered British Provinces of North America was made an accomplished fact, amidst general rejoicings. On the 4th of December, Mr. McDougall, who was now Minister of Public Works for the new Dominion of Canada, brought in, at the first session of Parliament, a series of resolutions directly relating to the acquisition of Rupert's Land and the Great North-West:—
1. That it would promote the prosperity of the Canadian people and conduce to the advantage of the whole Empire if the Dominion of Canada, constituted under the provisions of the British North America Act, 1867, were extended westward to the shores of the Pacific Ocean.
2. That the colonization of the lands of the Saskatchewan, Assiniboine, and Red River Settlements, the development of the mineral wealth which abounds in the regions of the North-West, and the extension of commercial intercourse through the British possessions in America from the Atlantic to the Pacific, are alike dependent upon the establishment of a stable government for maintenance of law and order in the North-West Territories.
3. That the welfare of the sparse and widely-scattered population of British subjects of European origin, already inhabiting these remote and unorganized territories, would be materially enhanced by the formation therein of political institutions bearing analogy, as far as circumstances will admit, to those which exist in the several Provinces of this Dominion.
4. That the 146th section of the British North America Act, 1867, provides for the admission of Rupert's Land and the North-West Territory, or either of them, into union with Canada upon terms and conditions to be expressed in Addresses from the Houses of Parliament of the Dominion to Her Majesty, and which shall be approved of by the Queen in Council.