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.