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 be to cancel the charter, and to
concede proprietary rights around fur posts only, together
with a certain money payment, considerably less, it appears,
than what was ultimately agreed upon.

The Hudson's Bay Company, alarmed at the outlook and the attitude
of the Colonial Secretary, 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 unfortunately declined
by Mr. Gladstone, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Duke,
who had resigned his office in 1864, died in October following,
and in the meantime a change of a startling character had come
over the time-honoured company, which sold out to a new company
in 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.
The policy of exclusion was to cease, immigration was to be
encouraged, and a telegraph line built through the Territories
to the Pacific coast. The wire for this was actually shipped,
and lay in Rupert's Land for years, until made use of by the
Mackenzie Administration in the building of the Government
telegraph line, which followed the railway route defined by
Sir Sandford Fleming. The old Hudson's Bay Company's shares,
of a par value of half a million pounds sterling, were increased
to a million and a half under the new adjustment, and were thrown
upon the market in shares of twenty pounds sterling each. Sir
Edmund Head, an old ex-Governor of Canada, was made Governor
of the new company. The Stock Exchange was not altogether
favourable, and the remaining shares were only sold in the
Winnipeg land boom of 1881.

The alien element in the new company seemed to inspire the
politicians of the United States with surpassing hopes and
ideas. An