During the first half of the Compa reign at Red River, the only cause of ill-feeling between their officers and those subject to their authority was their deter mination to keep at all hazards. the monopoly of the fur-trade. About the year 1834 private persons began importing goods from England on their own acount and for their own use, and gradually the system extended until they sent for goods on speculation of selling at a profit. This was countenanced by the Company until these petty traders began to agitate against the exclusive trade in furs after which every possible obstacle was placed in private importation. This was an act of injustice, and, more than that, a tactic cal blunder; for it forced the petty traders to bring in supplies over the Plains from the United States, and led to furs being smuggled across the boundary. In the end the Company failed to maintain their legal right to the monopoly of the fur trade, and after 1849 (when "great dex monstration in favour of Free-trade" prevented the Hudson's Bay Company's court from punishing a half-breed, who had sold furs to a priv ler) settlers on the Red River openly equipped parties and sent them into the interior to tratlie with the Indians. The Company, therefore, instead of attempting to punish these men and their ayonts determined to crush out their competition by the sheer force of their own greater wealth and superior resources.
Many of these petty traders were Cana-inns, and their representations (often highly coloured by personal prejudice) gradually brought about a general impression in Canada that the Hudson's Bay Compiny were misgoverning for their own advantage a vast react of country (to which the authorities of that grand old firm foresaw and were prepared to accept the inevitable.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.