INTRODUCTION, 17

events, that Parliament would be asked to annul even such
a charter as this, in order, as set forth in the Queen’s Speech,
that all obstacles to an unbroken chain of loyal settlements,
stretching from ocean to ocean, should be removed.” British
Columbia, which had become a Province in 1858, was now
urging the Imperial Government with might and main to
furnish a waggon-road and telegraph line te connect her, not
only with the Territories and Canada, but with the United
Empire. She was met by the stiffest of opposition, the
opposition of a very old corporation strongly entrenched in
the governing circles of both parties. But the clamour of
British Columbia was in the air, and her suggestions, hotly
opposed by the Company, had been brought before the House
of Lords by another peer. In the discussion which followed,
the Duke of Newcastle declared that “it seemed monstrous
that any body of gentlemen should exercise fee-simple rights
which precluded the future colonization of that territory, as
well as the opening of lines of communication through it.”
The Minister’s idea at the time seemed to he to eancel the
charter, and to concede proprietary rights around far posts
only, together with a certain money payment, considerably
less, it appears, than what was ultimately agreed wpon.

The Hudson’s Bay Company, alarmed at the outlook and
the attitude of the Colonial Seeretary, offered their entire
interests and belongings, trade and territorial, to the Imperial
Government for a million and a half pounds sterling, an offer
which the Duke was disposed to accept, but which was unfor-
tunately declined by Mr. Gladstone, then Chancellor of the
Exchequer. The Duke, who had resigned his offee In 1864,
died in October following, and in the meantime a change of
a startling character had come over the time-honoured com-
pany, which sold out to a new company im 1863, being
merged into, or rather merging into itself, an organization
known as “ The Anglo-International Financial Association,”
which included several prominent American capitalists. The
old name was retained, but everything else was to be changed.