The charter being confirmed, it was decided that the nominal capital of the Company should be increased to £31,500, several good reasons being put forward in committee for thus trebling the stock. These reasons are quaintly enumerated as follows:
I—That the Company have actually in Warehouse above the value of their first original stock.
II—That they have set out an Expedition this Yeare in their Shipps and Cargoe to more than the Value of their First Stock again; the trading of which Goods may well be estimated, in expectation as much more.
III—That our Factories at Port Nelson River and New Severne are under an increasing Trade; and that our Returns in Beavers this yeare (by God's Blessing) are modestly expected to be worth 20,000l.
IV—Our Forts, Factories, Guns and other Materials, the prospect of new Settlements and further Trade, are also reasonably to be estimated at a considerable intrinsic Value.
V—And lastly, our just Expectancy of a very considerable reparation and satisfaction from the French and the close of this War and the restoring our places and Trade at the Bottom of the Bay; which upon proof, hath been made out above 100,000l.
Some years later the Treaty of Ryswick, in securing to the French the fruits of Iberville's victory, powerfully affected for ill the fortunes of the Company. Nevertheless, the whole nation was then in sympathy with its cause, knowing that but for the continued existence of the Honourable Adventurers as a body corporate the chances of the western portion of the Bay reverting to the English were small.
But the Felt-makers were implacable. They would like to have seen the beaver trade in their own hands. At the expiration of the seven years for which the confirmation was allowed, they again, as will be shown, evinced, yet vainly, their enmity.
Because this parliamentary confirmation was limited to so short a period, some writers have conjectured that at the expiration of that period the charter ceased to be valid. So absurd a conclusion would scarcely appear to stand in need of refutation. Could those who pretend to draw this inference have been ignorant that if some of the rights conferred by the charter required the sanction of Parliament, there were other rights conferred by it which required no such sanction, because they were within the prerogative of the Crown? Even assuming that at the end of the term for which the act of William and Mary was passed, such of the provisions of the charter (if there could be found any such) as derived their efficacy only from parliamentary support should be considered inefficient, still all the rights similar to those of the charters for former governments and plantations in America would continue to exist. That they were so regarded as existing is made evident by the repeated references to them in various subsequent international treaties and acts of Parliament. King George and his advisers completely recognized the Company as proprietors of a certain domain. In establishing the limits of the newly-acquired Province of Canada, it was enacted that it should be bounded on the north by "the territory granted to the Merchants-Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay," a boundary which by statute was long to subsist.
Fort Albany did not prove a success in the hands of the French. The Quebec Company were losing money, and they had no ships. They were, besides, severely handicapped by physical conditions, owing to the inaccessibility of the Bay by land and the impracticability of carrying merchandise by the overland route. It seemed clear that, after all, the trade of the Bay could only be made profitable by sea.[23] The French were consequently most anxious to exchange the forts on James' Bay for Fort Nelson, because they were aware that better furs were to be had in the north; and because it would enable them to intercept the tribes who hunted about Lake Nepigon.