The Sun.
London, England, 1848-08-29 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, AUGUST 29, 1848.

Protection, after all, seems really to be only half
abolished. If our agriculturists are deprived of the
criminal delights of monopoly monopoly is still
maintained upon a gigantic scale among the great
corporations, who, under the shadow of the British
sceptre, rule those vast tracts of the American conti-
nent which are scantily populated with colonists and
aborigines, while they abound in wild animals from
the buffalo to the weazel. Already we have endea-
voured to expose the trickery by which a splendil
island, very nearly as large as England, is about to
be consigned by the Government to the charge of the
Hudson's Bay Company. In spite of the masterly
speech delivered by Mr. GLADSTONE in the House of
Commons during the sitting of Friday oven-
ing, 18th August, in spite of all that
has been said either within or without the walls of
Parliament by legislators and journalists, the Cabinet
still seems to evince its determination to carry out its
project as to the transference of Vancouver's Island
from the care of the mother country to that of an
isolated and almost irresponsible body of merchants,
Unless some decided movement be made for the pre-
vention of this dire arrangement, Quadra will be
closed for eleven years, if not permanently, against
emigration; the project of the Colonial Secretary
will be successfully consummated by his subordinate
colleagues; the selfish aspirations of Earl GaEY,
seconded by those of Mr. nawns and Mr. Bunnza,
will be realised ; and, if, to use a cant term of the old
astrologers, Orion be not predominant in the House
of Death, the Great Bear will be supreme in the
House of Misfortune.

Reference is being perpetually made by the ad-
vocates of the projected transference to the Red
River Settlement and to the Puget's Sound Association.
The Hon. and Learned Gentleman the Member for
Liskeard has even gone so far as to brag about the
" flourishing settlement," said to exist in some corner
or other of the island of Vancouver. It will be per-
ceived, from a communication published by ourselves
in another column, and addressed to one of our contem-
poraries, that every one of these vain-glorious allusions
arc nothing better than empty air—that the boasted
settlement in Vancouver's Island is a miserable group
of two or three Europeans and half a-dozen Indians
in a small wooden pent-house ; that the Red River
settlement is a disgrace to humanity, and that a more
wreteleed bugbear can scarcely be supposed to exist
than the famous Puget's Sound Association. Nor
can these revelations be any matter of astonishment,
as we have already intimated, when the character of
the avocations practised by the servants of the
Hudson's Bay Company is taken into con-
sideration. A company of speculators, whose
object of merchandise is fur, is assuredly the very
last which one would expect to foster the humanising
cause, of colonization, and to promote the diffusion of
the civilising arts and of Christianising knowledge.
The wilder the possessions are the more their
stock of bears and jackals thrive, the more they
propagate among the fastnesses of the primeval
forests, the more they multiply the riches of
the monopolists in the lonely valleys and the un-
trodden mountains. Every tree felled, every
acre cleared, every streamlet navigated, would
be ' a sensible diminution of the resources
of, the association. To keep up the exorbi-
tant dividends to the shareholders the most rational
course would be to prevent the habitation of the
countries from the solitudes of which they derived
their enormous profits and unflagging traffic. These
have invariably been the considerations of the direc-
tors of the Hudson's Bay Company. It is this prin-
ciple, or rather, we should say, this total absence of
principle, which has secured to them for a century
and a half such an astonishing prosperity, a pros-
perity as malign in its influences and as in-
glorious in its results as it has been marvellous
in its continuance and unprecedented in its
magnitude.
From the experience afforded us by the past history
of this remarkable community of merchants, we may
argue with so
me degree of security upon the pro•
bable consequence of the extension of their disastrous
policy elsewhere. From the statistics furnished from
their continental possessions
l conjecture
nojNe
cotrutrhe
the America,result
results of
may very safely
and readily
their iasular administration.
former
The
would be only
repeated in the latter ;n barrenness— in an
agricultural sense—of the rmer
the ignorance,
the population,
the despot-
ism, and the numerical
poverty
would be the the same only upon a oproportionate scale.
We should, at the end of the eleven
years look to
the narrative of occurrencesinVancouver, s Island, and
find Nothing—just as we have turned to the narrative
of the occurrences in the continental districts of the
company, after their sovereign rule of 1.50 years,
and have found a dismal and appalling void.
It must be acknowledged that the Hudson's Bay
Company have striven to screen themselves from the
odium of their repressive policy by a meagre pre-
NEW SrAieffc4-40f enterprise in the way of promoting emigre-
e;rflon— till, in proof that this movement hes been
ee
onlY a pretence, and a very .shallow pretence
;/;.',11:11-eztjon,fr,i've need merely mention the settlements of
ruipst's ound and on the Red River. Those settle-

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