n even having a child-ruler is the fate of a Kingdom or
Principality whose ruler is a hireling. The Roman Empire was ruled in
the different provinces by selfish and dishonest adventurers, who
tyrannized over the people, farmed out the revenues, bribed their
favorites and defrauded their masters. Turkish Government or Persian
Rule is to-day an organized system of extortion and oppression by
unscrupulous Satraps. Lord Selkirk's two governors, Miles Macdonell and
Robert Semple, had been removed, the former by capture, the latter by
death. Alexander Macdonell in 1816 became acting governor and was
confirmed in office for five or six years afterward. In his regime the
Grasshoppers came and did their destructive work, but the French people
nicknamed him "Governor Sauterelle," Grasshopper Governor, for, says the
historian of this decade he was so called, "because he proved as great a
destroyer within doors as the grasshoppers in the fields."

Lord Selkirk had been a most generous and sympathetic founder to his
Scottish Colony. He was not only proprietor of the whole Red River
Valley, but he felt himself responsible for the support and comfort of
his Colonists. He had to begin with supplying food, clothing,
implements, arms and ammunition to his settlers. He had erected
buildings for shelter and a store house and fort for the protection of
them and their goods. He had supplied, in a Colony shop, provisions and
all requisites to be purchased by his settlers and on account of their
poverty to be charged to their individual accounts.

George Simpson, who was the new Governor of the United Hudson's Bay
Company, was for two years Macdonell's contemporary, and he in one of
his letters says: "Macdonell is, I am concerned to say, extremely
unpopular, despised and held in contempt by every person connected with
the place, he is accused of partiality, dishonesty, untruth and
drunkenness,--in short, by a disrespect of every moral and elevated
feeling."

Alexander Ross says of him, "The officials he kept about him resembled
the court of an Eastern Nabob, with its warriors, serfs, and varlets,
and the names they bore were hardly less pompous, for here were
secretaries, assistant secretaries, accountants, orderlies, grooms,
cooks and butlers."

Satrap Macdonell held high revels in his time. "From the time the
puncheons of rum reached the colony in the fall, till they were all
drunk dry, nothing was to be seen or heard about Fort Douglas