LORD GREY'S VANCOUVER'S ISLAND JOB.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.
London, 26th July 1848. Sru—Agreeing most cordially in your condemnation of Lord Grey's wholesale pandering to the interests of monopoly in the case of the Hudson's Bay Company, and the utter unfitness of that Company to carry out the great work of colonizing Vancouver's Island,—while I am free to admit the extraordinary facilities it pos- sesses for doing so provided it were gifted with the requisite knowledge and liberality, or had indeed the inclination,—I venture to draw your attention to the fact, that it is not only proposed to give the property in the land, but the power of krovernment, to the Company; and that at a time when as yet unrefuted alle- gations of the gravest character are before Lord Grey, of the abuse of its author- ity in the Red River settlement. And although it is true that the officers of the Company preceded Franklin and Back, it was only in the prosecution of the fur trade, while the Company is by its Charter pledged to the prosecution of the dis- covery of the North-west passage; and it must not be forgotten, that though it has had the exclusive trade of the North-west coast, all geographIcal intelligence from that quarter, as well as from the interior, has been kept back, so that we knew nothing of it until the present time, (except from foreign 'sources,) since the discoveries of Vancouver and Mackenzie. EVen the first information of the existence of coal in Vancouver's Island was given by one of their discharged ser- vants, several years after its discovery; so that, while the citizens of the United States were fully aware of the value of the territory called the Oregon, its exist- ence was hardly known in this country, and the very statesmen who were on our part to decide the boundary were ignorant of its character and importance. I have for myself no hesitation in asserting my conviction that our geographical knowledge and political interests have been more retarded by the Company keep- ing back information, (as especially in the case of Mr. Thompson,) than ever either have been advanced by information derived from them. It may, however, be interesting to your readers to know, that since the survey lately made by her Majesty's officers belonging to the squadron in the Pacific, our information respecting the valuable and beautiful island in question is no longer scanty, but fully sufficient to warrant all that has been said of its desirableness for colonization: and permit me to add, that now North California is in the hands of the United States, and the right of passage over the Isthmus of Panama, which they obtained two years since, made known and confirmed, it is high time for us to secure what little the carelessness of statesmen and the rapacity of the Com- pany has left us on that coast.
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