Part 36 (2/2)
[Sidenote: The Company in difficulties.]
”Acc.u.mulated difficulties,” it said, ”have pressed hardly on the Company and we ask a.s.sistance to maintain a colony that till now has found within itself resources to withstand the pressure of all former wars and to continue those outfits on which six hundred Europeans and their families and some thousands of native Indians depend for their very existence.
”We a.s.sure your wors.h.i.+ps that it was not until all those resources were exhausted that we came to the resolution of making the present application.”
The pet.i.tion recited that after having received their charter the Company had colonized such parts of newly granted territories as appeared most convenient for carrying on their commerce with the natives. This commerce ”consisted in the barter of British manufactures for the furs of animals killed by the different tribes of Indians who were within reach of factories and gradually extended itself till, as at the present moment, the manufactures of Great Britain are borne by the traders of Hudson's Bay over the face of the whole country from Lake Superior to the Athabasca.
”The trade is at present pursued by the export of furs, gunpowder, shot, woollens, hardware and other articles, which together with large supplies of provisions for the factories, const.i.tute an annual outfit consisting wholly of British manufactures and British produce of from 40,000 to 50,000, in return for which we receive the furs of bears, wolves, foxes, otters, martens, beaver and other animals, together with some oil and articles of inferior value. The cargoes are sold at public sale. The beaver and some few inferior furs, together with the oil, are bought for home consumption and sell for about 30,000, but the fine furs were, till after the sale of 1806, bought by the fur merchants for the fairs of Frankfort and of Leipsic for Petersburg, and before the present war, for France. Since that year there has not been a fur sold for exportation, and as a proof to your wors.h.i.+ps that the deficiency of buyers did not arise from our holding back for a higher market, we sold in 1806 for seven s.h.i.+llings per skin furs that in the more quiet state of Europe in 1804 had brought us 20s. 3d., and which for years previous to that time had sold for a similar price; and other depreciation pervaded in about the same proportion the whole of those furs calculated only for the foreign market, and in some instances furs were sold for a less price than the duties we had paid for them.
”Since that period no orders have been received from abroad, and our warehouses are filled with the most valuable productions of three years' import that if sold at the prices of those years before the closing of the ports on the Continent would have produced us at least 150,000.
”It may be objected to us, that we were improvident in pursuing under such circ.u.mstances a trade which must so inevitably tend to ruin. But a certainty that a considerable quant.i.ty of furs found their way to New York, and an earnest zeal for the preservation of trade which by the conduct of the Hudson's Bay Company had been secured to this country for a century and a half, prompted us to every exertion to maintain the footing we had established, and the annually increasing amount of our trade gave us just grounds to look forward with confidence to the opening of the northern ports of Europe as the period when all our difficulties would cease; an event which, anterior to the battles of Austerlitz or of Jena, was looked for with the most sanguine expectation.
”Above all were we impelled by the strongest motives to continue these supplies which were necessary for the subsistence of six hundred European servants, their wives and children, dispersed over a vast and extended field of the North American Continent, and who would not be brought to Europe under a period of three years as well as those upon whom the many Indian nations now depend for their very existence.
”The nations of hunters taught for one hundred and fifty years the use of fire-arms could no more resort, with certainty, to the bow or the javelin for their daily subsistence. Accustomed to the hatchet of Great Britain, they could ill adopt the rude sharpened stone to the purposes of building, and until years of misery and of famine had extirpated the present race, they could not recur to the simple arts by which they supported themselves before the introduction of British manufactures. As the outfits of the Hudson's Bay Company consist princ.i.p.ally of articles which long habit have taught them now to consider of first necessity, if we withhold these outfits, we leave them dest.i.tute of their only means of support. The truth of this observation had a melancholy proof in the year 1782, when from the attack made upon the settlements by La Perouse, and the consequent failure of our supplies, many of the Indians were found starved to death.
[Sidenote: Pet.i.tion of the Company.]
”It was not only from the firm conviction that we felt of the necessity of European manufactures to the present existence of whole nations of North American Indians that we considered ourselves bound by the most powerful ties to exert every effort in their favour; but also that we might continue to them those advantages which would result to their religious as well as civil welfare from the progressive improvements, and a gradual system of civilisation and education which we have introduced throughout the country; improvements which are now diffusing the comforts of civilized life, as well as the blessings of the Christian faith to thousands of uninstructed Indians, and would in their completion, we can confidently a.s.sert, have tended to the future cultivation of lands, which from experiments we found capable of growing most of the grains of Northern Europe, and from their climate adapted to the culture of hemp and flax, and from the labour of those families who would have been induced to settle at our factories, might soon have brought to this country the produce of the boundless forests of pine that spread themselves over almost the southern parts of our possessions.
”To realize these not visionary schemes, but sure and certain plans, founded upon the progressive civilization of the natives, were objects not to be given up without the most urgent necessity, and the hope that the ruler of the French Empire could not forever shut out our trade from Europe, induced us to resort to every means within our power to preserve the advantages resulting to ourselves and to the Indians, and to the British nation.
”We have exhausted those funds which we set apart for their completion; we have pledged our credit till we feel, as honest men, that upon the present uncertainty we can pledge it no farther, and we throw ourselves upon your Wors.h.i.+p's wisdom to afford us that temporary a.s.sistance which we cannot ask at any other hands.
”Were we to resort to the early history of our settlements, we might lay the foundations of just claims upon the public to a.s.sist our present wants. We could show instances of most destructive attacks by the French upon our factories. Our forts and military works, mounted with a numerous and expensive artillery for the defence of the colony against their future operations, were destroyed and the guns ruined.
And particularly was a most grievous loss occasioned to us by the predatory attack of La Perouse about the conclusion of the American War, which caused the distress to which we have above alluded.
”Against these pressures when our trade flourished we were able to hold up, and we found within ourselves those resources which defeated the enemy's views and continued to Great Britain the trade we had established.
”And it is not until pressed to our last resort that we ask of your Lords.h.i.+ps that a.s.sistance with which we may confidently hope to preserve our trade until the continent may be again opened, when we shall be delivered from those difficulties under which we are now sinking.”
The pet.i.tion was signed by Wm. Mainwaring, Governor; Joseph Berens, Deputy Governor; George Hyde Wollaston, Thomas Neave, Job Mathew Raikes, Thomas Langley, John Henry Pelly, Benjamin Harrison, John Webb.
In April the Adventurers pet.i.tioned the King in Council to reduce duties on furs to one-half, or trade must suffer extinction. No profit was derivable, it said, on marten, wolf, bear, wolverine and fisher-skins.
To this pet.i.tion the Office of Committee of Privy Council for Trade, Whitehall, replied in the following February, that the memorial of the Hudson's Bay Company contained no proposition on which the Lords of this Council could ”offer any opinion to the Lords of Treasury.”
[Sidenote: Small Government a.s.sistance.]
As their pet.i.tion was denied, the Company now boldly prepared a request and asked for a loan of 60,000, and that time be extended for paying the duties on furs imported until the continental market re-opened. To this request an answer was returned, allowing twelve months storage of furs free of duty and promising drawbacks as if storage had only been for one year, but stating that there were no funds out of which a loan could be made without special authority of Parliament.
It was clear that the Company was in very low water, and that some new salutary policy was demanded. By way of a beginning, barter was abolished as a basis of trade, and money payments ordered. At the same time the Adventurers stole a leaf out of the book of the North-West company, and new regulations, comprising thirty-five articles, were made in the early months of 1810, for carrying on the business in Hudson's Bay.
The principle of allowing to their chief officers a considerable partic.i.p.ation in the profits of their trade was admitted. It was found absolutely necessary to adopt some step of this sort, as nothing of such a measure could be sufficient to stem the torrent of aggression with which they had been a.s.sailed by the North-West company; and their absolute ruin must have ensued if some effectual means had not been taken, not only to rectify some of the abuses which had crept in under the former system, but also to rouse their officers to a more effectual resistance of the lawless violence practised against them.
The total lack of jurisdiction in the Indian country, as the territory which was the scene of the operations of the fur-traders was called, permitted crime to go unpunished, and numerous representations were made in respect to the evils of this practical immunity from punishment. In Sir Alexander Mackenzie's letter of the 25th of October, 1802, he says that, in view of the improbability of the two companies amalgamating, a jurisdiction should be established as speedily as possible, to prevent the contending fur companies from abusing the power either might possess, so as to secure to each the fruits of fair, honest and industrious exertion; it would also, he believed, tend to put a stop to the increasing animosity between the two companies. Mr. Richardson, of the other company, also pressed for the establishment of a competent jurisdiction and instanced the case of one of the clerks in his company who had killed a clerk of the other in defending the property in his care. The young man had come to Montreal to be tried, but there being no jurisdiction there for such trial, ”he remains in the deplorable predicament that neither his innocence nor his guilt can be legally ascertained.” He also proposed that a military post should be established at Thunder Bay, on Lake Superior, as an additional means of securing peace.
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