It is now nearly twenty-four years
old. I have read it again and again. I am not ashamed of it. I see
nothing to retract; little to alter:--
"The present state of government in the Red River Settlement is
attributable alike to the habitual attempt, encouraged, perhaps very
naturally, in England and in Canada, to discredit the traditions, and
question the title of the Hudson's Bay Company, and to the false
economy which has stripped the Governor of a military force, with
which, in the last resort, to support the decisions of the legal
tribunals. No other organized Government of white men in the world,
since William Penn, has endeavoured to rule any population, still less
a promiscuous people composed of whites, half-breeds. Indians, and
borderers, without a soldiery of some sort, and the inevitable result
of the experiment has, in this case, been an unpunished case of prison-
breaking, not sympathised in, it is true, by the majority of the
settlers, but still tending to bring law and government into contempt,
and greatly to discourage the governing body held responsible for
keeping order in the territory.
"At the same time it must be conceded, that, while government by a
merchant organization has eminently succeeded, up to an obvious point
of time and circumstances, in the cases both of the East India and
Hudson's Bay Companies, and is still applicable to the control and
management of distant districts, it contains within itself the seeds of
its own ultimate dissolution.
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