"This," remarked a counsel for the Company in a later day, "is like a man who has a suit of ejectment, who, in order to avoid the expense and trouble of a law suit, says, 'I will be willing to allow you certain bounds, but if you do not accept that I will insist on getting all my rights and all that I am entitled to.'"
The Company's propositions soon began to take a definite form.
The Company's Claims after the Treaty of Ryswick.
[To the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations.]
The limits which the Hudson's Bay Company conceive to be necessary as boundaries between the French and them in case of an exchange of places, and that the Company cannot obtain the whole Streights and Bay, which of right belongs to them, viz.:—
1. That the French be limited not to trade by wood-runners, or otherwise, nor build any House, Factory, or Fort, beyond the bounds of 53 degrees, or Albany River, vulgarly called Chechewan, to the northward, on the west or main coast.
2. That the French be likewise limited not to trade by wood-runners, or otherwise, nor build any House, Factory, or Fort, beyond Rupert's River, to the northward, on the east or main coast.
3. On the contrary, the English shall be obliged not to trade by wood-runners, or otherwise, nor build any House, Factory, or Fort, beyond the aforesaid latitude of 53 degrees, or Albany River, vulgarly called Chechewan, south-east towards Canada, on any land which belongs to the Hudson's Bay Company.
4. As also the English be likewise obliged not to trade by wood-runners, or otherwise, nor build any House, Factory, or Fort, beyond Rupert's River, to the south-east, towards Canada, on any land which belongs to the Hudson's Bay Company.
5. As likewise, that neither the French or English shall at any time hereafter extend their bounds contrary to the aforesaid limitations, nor instigate the natives to make war, or join with either, in any acts of hostility to the disturbance or detriment of the trade of either nation, which the French may very reasonably comply with, for that they by such limitations will have all the country south-eastward betwixt Albany Fort and Canada to themselves, which is not only the best and most fertile part, but also a much larger tract of land than can be supposed to be to the northward, and the Company deprived of that which was always their undoubted right.