HC Deb 18 March 1864 vol 174 cc301-2
SIR EDWARD GROGAN

said, he wished to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether the Hudson's Bay Company had any ownership in the soil or any right, except that of taking wild animals, to the district of country lying between Lake Superior and British Columbia, comprising the only prairie and some of the most fertile land in British America; and, if the Company had no right, whether the said district should not be opened for settlement under the Crown, and thus invite the emigrants who now leave this country for the United States to settle in our own Colony?

MR. CHICHESTER FORTESCUE

said, in reply, that the Hudson's Bay Company had always claimed and still claimed territorial as well as trading and hunting rights over the country referred to in the question of the hon. Baronet, and those claims had been twice submitted to the Law Officers of the Crown under two different Governments, and pronounced by them to be valid. Under these circumstances, and considering the length of time —200 years—during which the claims of the Hudson's Bay Company had been unquestioned, his noble Friend the Duke of Newcastle did not think it his duty, except in the ease of most extreme necessity, to question those claims. With respect to opening out the country to settlement, he must say that he did not think that the country had hitherto been closed against settlement by the fact of its being in the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company. He believed that it was its situation, and the natural difficulties of that region which separated the territory in question from Canada, together with its distance beyond the settled territory of the United States, that had constituted the real reasons why population had not made its way and was not likely to make its way there in considerable numbers until the more desirable prairie land of the United States was opened out. Still, the period was approaching when it would be desirable to remove every obstacle to the settlement of the district in question, and his noble Friend was in communication with the authorities of the Hudson's Bay Company in the hope of arriving at some agreement by which the territory might be transferred from the Company to the Crown.