The Sun.
London, England, 1863-07-08 00:00:00

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 1863.

CHARLES LAMB'S Essay upon Roast Pig has long
since familiarised us all with the brilliant idea
occurring to the Chinese discoverer of that same
delicious edible, immediately after his (luckily)
burning his fingers with the hot crackling and then
tasting it ! His instant notion being—who by any
possibility can have forgotten it ?—the conflagra-
tion of a whole house, to furnish forth again that
one savoury and entrancing dish. Not an Elian
Philosopher since CHARLES LAMB wrote that re-
nowned Essay—that Essay of Essays, ELIA'S
masterpiece—but has exulted, of course, over the
Chinaman's notion as over a flash of genius, reading
on (whenever the book opened at that chapter) with
a watering month, turning the well-thumbed leaves
until they could be turned no longer for very
laughter. Laugh, however, as we may at the
Chinaman's simple but rather costly plan of burning
down a house to get at a dinner—of Roast Pig !
England has been doing now for nearly two hundred
years past very much the same kind of thing, is
actually doing it still, or at any rare conniving at
its being done. Nay, not simply permitting and
authorising a proceeding as ridiculous in its extra-
vagance as that suggested in the realms of fancy
frequented by the Great Humorist's imagination,
but one far and away still more preposterous in its
absurdity, in its utter fatuity, in its ultra-extrava-
gance. And this, not for a dinner or a dish, but for a
garment or the mere trimming of a garment. During
the reign of King CHARLES 11., in the year 1670,
otherwise one hundred and ninety-three years ago,
a Royal Charter was granted by his MAJESTY to
the Hudson's Bay Company, by the name of " The
Governor and Company of Adventurers of England
trading into Hudson's Bay." And by this Charter
a vast tract of territory was vested in the
Company, together with the sole right of
trade and commerce, and, with that right, all
" mines royal," as well then ::!scovered as not
discovered in those same vast and fertile regions of
North America. The Company has since then been
in existence aed--working. The Royal Charter has
since then, with one or two renewals, been in force
continuously—is still in force to this day. To what
end—we all know. To the end that that
gigantic
territory, in dimensions about the size of the half of
Europe, shall enable the said Company of Adven-
turers, as represented by the successors of the origi-
nal projectors of the same, to trade year after
year profitably for themselves in—fur ! henever
the fact here referred to is thus put plainly in so
many words, it seems to us each time, almost be-
yond the reach of credibility that it should be, as we
have here stated. And yet it incontrovertibly ts
precisely as we have stated it, and it has been so
now for close upon two centuries. Familiar though
the fact is, notorious though it is, as (for we may
actually call it this) a geographical, a political, a
social, and even a religious anomaly, an anomaly
affecting detrimentally the interests of mankind,
whether in regard to civilisation or in re-
gard to Christianity—it is just now vividly
and especially brought under our con-
sideration by the circumstance that the
whole of the Hudson's Bay Company's territory
en masse is now being talked of as having been
transferred by that company to an entirely new
company, this latter being entitled the International
Financial Company, Limited. A brief but perti-
nent and suggestive letter, addressed to ourselves,
and signed " Traveller," will be found in another
part of our impression of this evening—in the
course of which communication the writer throws
out a hint that we aincerely hope may at once be
acted upon—a hint, namely, to the effect that the
whole of this extraordinary affair be forth with venti-
lated in the House of Commons. For some few
weeks past it has been the subject of a good
deal of club talk. It seems to us still a thing
almost beyond belief that so vast a territory should
be coolly made a matter of mere ordinary barter
between a couple of mercantile associations. An
answer ought certainly to be elicited from the re-
sponsible Minister upon the Treasury bench. And
under any circumstances the opportunity ought
to be seized, or if nut within our grasp it ought
as rapidly as possible to be made and grasped—
an opportunity, by availing ourselves of which, We
might at length turn to better account so noble a
dominion as that which has hitherto been set apart
for the mere acquisition of fur as an article of com-
merce. A, country having an estimated area of