"Before Leaving England, I Repeatedly Pressed The Necessity Of
Communicating With The Governor And 'wintering Partners' Of The Company
In
America, so that they should not hear of the transfer of the
property for the first time from the newspapers;
And I expected to be
specially authorized to give the needful information and assurances. I
was no party, I beg to say, to this mention of my name in the
prospectus; but my friends and business connections who may have taken
shares on the faith of my name, will naturally hold me responsible
accordingly. Still, anxious to witness the success of a project which,
energetically managed, is so intrinsically sound, I refrained from
writing to you to decline the responsibility, hoping that the original
plan of delegation, though delayed, would be carried out. That plan, I
must observe, involved not a mere commission of engineers to explore
the route for a telegraph to Jasper House, as assumed in the
Secretary's letter of the 13th inst., but far wider objects, the
realization of which would, I venture to think, have given satisfaction
at home, and have dissipated many misconceptions, now existing,
inimical to the interests of the new proprietary.
"Your letter to me of the 6th July did not reach me till the 20th, and
in the meantime the newspaper notices in England led to many official
and unofficial inquiries from me, involving difficulty of answer. I
found, in fact, that the staff of the Hudson's Bay Company was quite at
fault, and that public men in Canada misunderstood the objects of the
new organization, for want of information very simple in its nature,
but which - except so far as the prospectus authorized me - I had no
right to supply.
"Several of the Hudson's Bay Company's chief factors and traders had,
it appeared, addressed a memorial to the then Governor and Committee,
some months ago, upon the rumoured sale of the property, and had been,
as stated to me, informed that no transfer was likely to take place, or
would in fact be undertaken without previous consultation; and yet
these gentlemen learnt for the first time from the public papers that
new arrangements had been made. It was not unnatural, therefore,
considering the relations of these gentlemen with the Company, that
they should feel much annoyed; nor was it, perhaps, surprising that an
influential member of the body should have predicted a general
resignation of the factors 'from Labrador to Sitka,' followed by a
confederation amongst them, in order to carry on the fur trade in
competition with the Hudson's Bay Company, they possessing, as was
said, 'the skill, the will, and the capital to do it.'
"The appearance of Mr. Lampson's name as Deputy-Governor, in the
absence of any prior explanation, aggravated the first feeling of
distrust; for it was said that he and his connections had been, and
then were, the Company's great, and often successful, rivals in the fur
trade, carrying on a vigorous competition at all accessible points.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 95 of 259
Words from 49297 to 49800
of 136421
