The chief dependence of the Company seems to have been on one Henry Kelsey, who went as a boy to Hudson Bay, but rose to be chief officer there. The critics of the Company were not slow to state that Kelsey had been a refugee from their forts and had lived for several seasons among the Indians of the interior. Even if this were so, it is still true that Kelsey came to be one of the most enterprising of the wood-runners of the Company. Dobbs confronted them with the fact that the voyage from Lake Superior to Hudson Bay had been only made once in their history, and that by Joseph La France, the Canadian Indian. Certainly, whether from timidity, caution, inertia, or from some deep-seated system of policy, it was true that the Company had done little to penetrate the interior.
The charge that the Company abused the Indians was hardly substantiated. The Company was dependent on the goodwill of the Indians, and had they treated them badly, their active rivals, the French, would simply have reaped the benefit of their folly. That the price charged the Indians for goods was as large as the price paid for furs was small, is quite likely to have been true. Civilized traders all the world over, dealing with ignorant and dependent tribes, follow this policy. No doubt the risks of life and limb and goods in remote regions are great, and great profits must be made to meet them. It is to be remembered, however, that when English and French traders came into competition, as among the Iroquois in New York State, and afterwards in the Lake Superior district, the quality of the English goods was declared by the Indians better and their treatment by the English on the whole more honest and aboveboard than that by the French.
That traders should neglect their own forts seems very unlikely. Those going to the Hudson Bay Main expected few luxuries, and certainly did not have an easy life, but there was on the part of the Company a vast difference in treatment as compared with that given to the fur traders in New France as they went to the far west. No doubt pressure for dividends prevented expenditure that was unnecessary, but a perusal of the experience of Champlain with his French fur company leads us to believe that the English were far the more liberal and considerate in the treatment of employés.
The fortress of the River Churchill, known as the Prince of Wales Fort, with its great ruins to be seen to-day, belonging to this period, speaks of a large expense and a high ideal of what a fort ought to be. During the examination of witnesses by the Committee, full opportunity was given to show cases of ill-treatment of men and poor administration of their forts. Twenty witnesses were examined, and they included captains, merchants, and employés, many of whom had been in the service of the Company on the Bay, but whether, as Robson says, "It must be attributed either to their confusion upon appearing before so awful an assembly, or to their having a dependence on the Company and an expectation of being employed again in their service," little was elicited at all damaging to the Company.
The charge of the fewness of the forts and the smallness of the trade was more serious. That they should have a monopoly of the trade, and should neither develop it themselves, nor allow others to develop it, would have been to pursue a "dog in the manger" policy. They stated that they had on an average three ships employed solely on their business, that their exports for ten years immediately preceding amounted to 40,240l. and their imports 122,835l., which they claimed was a balance of trade satisfactory to England.
The objection that the whole capital of the Company at the commencement, 10,500l., was trifling, was perhaps true, but they had made great profits, and they used them in the purchase of ships and the building of forts, and now had a much more valuable property than at the beginning. That they had been able to increase their stock so largely was a tribute to the profits of their business and to its ability to earn dividends on a greatly increased capital stock.
The increase of stock as shown by the Company was as follows:—
| Original stock | £10,500 |
| Trebled in 1690 | 31,500 |
| Trebled in 1720 | 94,500 |
At this time there was a movement to greatly increase the stock, but the stringency of the money market checked this movement, and subscriptions of ten per cent. were taken, amounting to 3,150l. only. This was also trebled and added to the original 94,500l., making a total stock of 103,950l.
Some three years after the investigation by the Committee, one of the witnesses, Joseph Robson, who gave evidence of the very mildest, most non-committal character, appears to have received new light, for he published a book called, "An Account of Six Years' Residence in Hudson's Bay." He says in the preface, speaking of the evidence given by him in the investigation, "For want of confidence and ability to express myself clearly, the account I then gave was far from being so exact and full as that which I intended to have given." What the influence was that so effectually opened Robson's eyes, we do not know. The second part of this work is a critique of the evidence furnished by the Company, and from the vigour employed by this writer as compared with the apathy shown at the investigation, it is generally believed that in the meantime he had become a dependent of Dobbs.