Colonel Bladen was right. After receiving the English demands, the French Commissioners, the Marechal d'Estrees and the Abbé Dubois, never met the English Commissioners again, and all the instances of the English Ambassadors failed to procure a renewal of the conferences.

The Company were again called upon on the 25th July, 1750, to lay before the Lords of Trade an account of the limits and boundaries of the territory granted to them. They replied, among other things, that the said Straits and Bay "are now so well known, that it is apprehended they stand in no need of any particular description than by the chart or map herewith delivered, and the limits or boundaries of the land and countries lying round the same, comprised, as your memorialists conceive, in the said grant, are as follows: that is to say, all the lands lying on the east side or coast of the said Bay, and extending from the Bay eastward to the Atlantic Ocean and Davis' Strait, and the line hereafter mentioned as the east and south-eastern boundaries of the said Company's territories; and towards the north, all the lands that lie at the north end, or on the north side or coast of the said Bay, and extending from the Bay northwards to the utmost limits of the lands, then towards the North Pole; but where or how these lands terminate is hitherto unknown; and towards the west, all the lands that lie on the west side or coast of the said Bay, and extending from the said Bay westward to the utmost limits of those lands; but where or how these lands terminate to the westward is also unknown, though probably it will be found they terminate on the Great South Sea; and towards the south," they propose the line already set out by them, before and soon after the Treaty of Utrecht, stating that the Commissioners under that treaty were never able to bring the settlement of the said limits to a final conclusion; but they urged that the limits of the territories granted to them, and of the places appertaining to the French, should be settled upon the footing above mentioned.

APPENDIX S.

MEMORANDUM.

The Commissioner of Crown Lands submits the following remarks on the North-West Territories of Canada, Hudson Bay, the Indian Territories and the Questions of Boundary and Jurisdiction connected therewith, to accompany the other Documents:

The question now under special consideration has more particular reference to the subject of the renewal of a Lease held by the Hudson's Bay Company for the "Indian Territories, which are not considered to be within the boundaries of Canada, though subject to Canadian jurisdiction.

But the Hudson's Bay Company's "Map and Statement of Rights," under the original Charter, as submitted to the Imperial Government in 1850 by Sir J. H. Pelly, the Chairman o the Company, has also however to be considered in connection with it.

It becomes necessary therefore to expose the fallacies of the "Statement of Rights and Map" referred to, in order that the rights of the Province may not be misunderstood or the pretensions of the Company taken for granted.

The rights of the Hudson's Bay Company and the effect of their operations upon the interests of Canada, will best be considered under the following separate heads, viz. :

First. With respect to their operations under the original Charter on the territories affected thereby.

Second. With respect to their operations within the boundaries of this Province, on what has been termed the Indian Territories, now under lease to them.

Third. With respect to their operations.

Fourth-Arising out of the foregoing, the more important question of the Boundaries of the above Territorial Divisions and

Fifth. With respect to jurisdiction as exercised and as sanctioned by law.

OPERATIONS OF THE COMPANY ON THEIR OWN TERRITORIES.

On the first head, as regards their operations under their Charter on the territories which, if valid, it would cover, it is a matter of very secondary importance to Canada. The territories of the Hudson's Bay Company, taken at the largest extent which any sound construction of their Charter in connection with international rights would warrant, if not in point of distance so very remote, are nevertheless so situated, that it can only be when all the localities to the south and west, more available for purposes of agriculture and settlement, have been filled to overflowing, that settlers may be gradually forced into that vicinity from the superabundant population of more favoured countries.

The most direct interest that Canada could have in the matter at the present moment, being responsible for the administration of justice there, would be rather of a moral and political than of an interested or commercial character. But as the necessities of the Company, in whose hands a monopoly of the trade has practically existed since the Treaty of Utrecht, together with the powers which they profess to derive from their Charter, has induced them to establish a jurisdiction which, for the moment, seems to have been successful in maintaining tranquillity and order, Canada has had no special reason to intervene, though if any complaints had been made on this score she would of course have felt called upon to exercise the powers vested in her by Imperial Statutes.

It is not indeed to be denied that the freedom of the trade, consisting of furs and fisheries, would be of advantage to this country; but as this involves a question of the validity of the Charter, and whether or not, if valid in respect of the territory really affected by it, it would also affect the open sea of the Bay, and seeing that the question is not now raised of any

further legislation to give effect to the powers it professes to confer, the consideration of this point is immaterial at the present moment compared with the more important subjects that have to be treated of.

OPERATIONS OF THE COMPANY ON CANADIAN TERRITORIES.

The second point to be taken into consideration, and which is of a more important nature, is that which affects the operations of the Company within the boundaries of Canada, and on this head it must be admitted that they have had every facility they could possibly enjoy in their own territories, if such exist whether on the coasts of Labrador, Lakes Huron, Superior or Winnipeg; whether on the Saguenay, the St. Maurice, the Ottawa, the Red River, the Assiniboine or the Saskatchewan; wherever they have operated within the boundaries of Canada, they have had precisely the same scope as within their own territories on the shores of Hudson's Bay: not indeed but what if opposition had sprung up, the same facilities must necessarily have been afforded to any rival traders, had they not been effectually protected from such rivalry by their unlimited means, their extensive ramifications and compiete organization, with which no rival traders were able to compete, unless indeed to a very limited extent in the immediate vicinity of the settlements.

There are indeed parts of the Province so remote from established settlements, and having so little direct intercourse with them, that in former years it might have been to some extent a tax upon the country to have established tribunals sufficient to enforce the laws over regions inhabited only, with one exception, by the servants of the Company and the Indians, though it may now be reasonably questioned whether corresponding benefits would not have accrued from such a course, while it must be admitted that the Company have at all events reaped a profit, taking together the costs they have been put to from the want of legal tribunals and the monopoly of the

trade which the non-organization of such tribunals has practi cally been the means of enabling them to enjoy.

The exception referred to, where a considerable settlement exists, besides the employees of the Company and the Indians, is the Red River Country.

But the time has passed when any considerations of expense or temporary inconvenience, even if proved to exist, can be allowed to stand in the way of opening up those territories, when indeed the necessity for expansion compels the Provincial Government to create further facilities for it; and as an additional reason why the Government should no longer permit the present state of things to continue, it must be added that rumours have been gaining ground of late years, with a force and clearness that almost compel conviction, that the jurisdiction actually exercised in those remote localities has been as contrary to the wishes of the people as it has been manifestly without the sanction of the law, all which has created a necessity for early investigation and action on the part of the Canadian Government.

With this view preparations were made in the Crown Lands Department last summer for a preliminary survey from the head of Lake Superior westward, preparatory to the opening of free grant roads, which have been so successful in other parts of the country, for the purpose of forming the nucleus of a settlement which would gradually penetrate to the valley of the Red River and the prairies beyond; besides which a first-class thoroughfare would be necessary to afford easier means of communication with the navigable waters flowing to the west, &c., to facilitate the administration of justice in the distant settlements, and the necessary intercourse generally between those parts and the more populous districts of the country, and which would at the same time throw open to emigration, agriculture and commerce a far larger area, with at least an equal average mildness of climate, and susceptible of more rapid development (a known characteristic of prairie countries), than all other parts of the Province heretofore rendered available for settlement.