Part 43 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: SIR GEORGE SIMPSON.]

The partners met at Fort William, in July, 1820, and a stormy session served to reflect their vexed plight. Dissensions exhibited themselves; the minority, at least, felt that in their London agents--Ellice and the McGillivrays--coming to terms with the Hudson's Bay Company, lay their only hope of salvation.

[Sidenote: Union of the two Companies.]

Without, however, consulting the powers at Fort William, these agents in London were acting on their own account. Conferences with the Chartered Adventurers took place daily. By the time the partners.h.i.+p between the Northmen themselves expired, in 1821, the negotiations had attained the form of an agreement. Delegates had been sent from Fort William to confer with their English representatives as to the future of the interests of the North-West Company. Ellice received them cordially in his office in Mark Lane and showed them an instrument which he called the Deed Poll. This doc.u.ment bore the names of the Governor, Berens, and the Committee of the Honourable Hudson's Bay Company, on the one part, and the McGillivrays and Ellice, on the other. The astonished delegates gazed upon the signed and sealed instrument, and recognized that the North-West Company had ceased to exist. ”Amalgamation,” cried one of them, ”this is not amalgamation, but submersion. We are drowned men.”

A coalition and partners.h.i.+p had been agreed upon for twenty-one years, on the basis that each should furnish an equal capital for conducting the trade. This Deed Poll, which bore date of March 26, 1821, provided that the expenses of the establishment should be paid out of the trade, and that no expense of colonization or any commerce not directly relating to the fur-trade, was to fall upon the Company.

The profits were to be divided into one hundred equal parts, of which forty were to be shared between the chief factors and chief traders, according to profit and loss. If a loss should occur in one year on these forty shares it was to be made good out of the profits of the year ensuing. A general inventory and account was to be made out annually on the 1st of June. If profits were not paid to any parties within fourteen days of that date, interest was to be allowed then at the rate of five per cent.

When the Deed Poll was signed, it was stipulated that twenty-five chief factors and twenty-eight chief traders should be appointed, to be named in alternate succession from the Hudson's Bay and the North-West Company's servants. Both were placed on an equal footing, the forty shares out of the hundred being again subdivided into eighty-five shares, in order that each of the twenty-five chief factors should receive two (or 2/85ths), and each of the chief traders one of such shares. The remaining seven shares, to complete the eighty-five, were set apart for old servants, to be paid them during a term of seven years.

[Sidenote: Plan of union.]

The chief factors were to superintend the business of the Company at their respective stations, while the chief traders under them were to conduct the commerce with the Indians. The third cla.s.s was the clerks, who were promoted to factors.h.i.+ps and traders.h.i.+ps, according to good conduct and seniority, but whose clerical salaries ranged from 20 to 100 per annum. The chief factors and traders, who wintered in the interior, were granted, in addition to their share of profits, certain personal necessaries free of cost. They were not, however, permitted to carry on any private trade on their own account with the Indians.

Strict accounts were required of them annually. The councils at the various posts were empowered to mulct, admonish or suspend any of the Company's servants. Each year three chief factors and two chief traders were granted twelve months leave of absence. A chief factor or chief trader, after wintering three years in the service might retire, and hold his full share of profits for one year after so retiring, with half the share for the four succeeding years. If he wintered for five years, he was granted half profits for six years on retiring.

Retirements of chief factors and chief traders were made annually by rotation, three of the former, or two of the former and two of the latter. The heirs of a chief factor or chief trader who died after wintering five years received all the benefit to which the deceased or himself would have been ent.i.tled had he lived, or in proportion otherwise. Everything was thus regulated, provision was effected for everything. The Northmen, rough, enterprising, adventurous, as many of them were, found themselves part of a huge machine, operated with sleepless vigilance of a governor and committee in London. As for the profits, they were to be estimated after the entire expenses, both in London and the fur country, were deducted. They were then to be divided into fifths, of which three-fifths went to the proprietary and two-fifths to the chief factors, chief traders and clerks, who were to be thenceforward known as the ”fur-trade” or the ”wintering partners.”

No wonder that many of the Northmen were constrained to cry out, in the language of one of their number[109]: ”Alas, the North-West is now beginning to be ruled with an iron rod!”

FOOTNOTES:

[106] Benjamin Frobisher was a native of York, England.

[107] At the trials at York in October, 1818, Sherwood, the North-West Company's counsel, continually demanded to know why Semple was called governor. ”Why,” he exclaimed, with ludicrous energy, ”why should this gentleman be continually dignified by the appellation of governor? The indictment charged that Robert Semple was killed and murdered; it said nothing about his being a governor. If he was a governor, then he was also an emperor. Yes, gentlemen,” shrieked the counsel, working himself up to fever heat, ”I repeat, an emperor--a bashaw in that land of milk and honey, where nothing, not even a blade of corn, will ripen. Who made him governor? Did the King? Did the Prince Regent? No; this pretended authority was an illegal a.s.sumption of power, arrogating to itself prerogatives such as are not exercised even by the King of England. I demand that Robert Semple be called Robert Semple--but as he was not a governor let us not be ----”

”Come, come,” cried Chief Justice Powell, ”do let this trial go on! It is no matter whether he was or was not a governor, or what he was called, or called himself, he is not to be murdered, though he was not a governor.”

[108] ”Ses postes,” says Senator Ma.s.son, ”avient ete pilles et devastes; ses exportatiors considerablement sedintes.” On the other hand, he adds, these losses were partly compensated for by the high prices secured in England for their furs.

[109] Wentzel.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

1821-1847.

The Deed Poll -- A Governor-in-Chief Chosen -- A Chaplain Appointed -- New License from George IV. -- Trade on the Pacific Coast -- The Red River Country Claimed by the States -- The Company in California -- The Oregon Question -- Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1825 -- The _Dryad_ Affair -- Lieutenant Franklin's two Expeditions -- Red River Territory Yielded to Company -- Enterprise on the Pacific.

By the terms of the Deed Poll, the immediate control of the Company's affairs in its territory pa.s.sed from the hands of a committee sitting in London, to a personage known as Governor-in-Chief of Rupert's Land and his council. His commission extended over all the Company's lands and possessions, with an unlimited tenure of office. The council was to be composed of chief factors, and occasionally a few chief traders, who were to meet at some convenient centre for the purposes of consultation, this particular feature being a survival of the rendezvous of Fort William. The chartered territories and circuit of commercial relations were divided into vast sections, known as the Northern, Southern, Montreal and Western Departments. The Northern extended between Hudson's Bay and the Rocky Mountains, the Southern, between James' Bay and Canada, including a part of the eastern sh.o.r.e of Hudson's Bay.

[Sidenote: Governor Simpson.]

Such a Governor-in-Chief should be a person of energy, shrewdness and ability. Mr. Ellice had been struck by the qualities and special apt.i.tude for this important post of a young Scotchman, named George Simpson. This young man was an illegitimate son of the maternal uncle of Thomas Simpson, the Arctic explorer. While clerk in a London counting-house, George Simpson had attracted the attention of Andrew Colville, Lord Selkirk's brother-in-law, who sent him to Rupert's Land in the service of the Company. The responsibility was a tremendous one, but Simpson did not flinch from accepting it; and the end showed the wisdom of the appointment. For nearly forty years this man stood at the head of the fur-trade: a potentate in the midst of the wilderness, the virtual ruler of almost one-half of a continent.

Governor Simpson was a man of small stature, but he had ”the self-possession of an emperor.”[110] Accompanied by his voyageurs and clerks, he journeyed along the old Ottawa and lake route, through the Grand Portage, or by Fort William and Lake of the Woods, accomplis.h.i.+ng this feat at least once a year throughout the entire period of his rule. At the outset of his career he perceived that the management of Red River colony was an extremely difficult task--harder perhaps than the management of the fur-trade. But he attacked both with energy, resolved to serve his employers, and to create, at all hazards, harmony and prosperity in the territories.

Part of the time he spent at Red River, part in Oregon, in Athabasca, and at Hudson's Bay. He crossed the Rocky Mountains at three different lat.i.tudes, and journeyed extensively over the vast territory of which he was truly the ”commercial sovereign.”