"It does not appear that the interposition of '_an irresponsible company_' can be attended with benefit to the colony.----A company whose direction is in London, and which is wholly _irresponsible_, either to the colonists or to the British Parliament.----There is ample evidence in the foregoing pages that it would be absurd to give this company credit for _unproductive patriotism_.----Considering the identity existing between this association [the Puget Sound Association] and the Hudson's Bay Company, in whose hands the whole management of the colonization of Vancouver Island is placed, there is a very strong reason to fear that the arrangements which have been made will, for some years at any rate, utterly ruin that country as a field for colonial enterprise. There is a strong inducement for the company to grant all the best part of the island to themselves, under the name of the Puget Sound Association; and to trust to the settlements which may be formed by that association as being sufficient to satisfy the obligation to colonize which is imposed by the charter. "There is a strong inducement to discourage the immigration of independent settlers; first, because when all the colonists are in the position of their own servants, they will be able much more readily to prevent interference with the fur trade; and secondly, _because the presence of private capital in the island could only tend to diminish their own gains, derived from the export of agricultural produce._ "And, on the other hand, there will be every possible discouragement to emigrants of the better class to settle in a colony where a large part of the country will be peopled only by the lowest order of workmen, where they may have to compete with the capital of a wealthy company, and that company not only their rival in trade, but at the same time possessed of the supreme power, and of paramount political influence in the colony. "There is a reason, more important than all, why the Hudson's Bay Company will never be able to form _a colony_. An agricultural settlement they may establish; a few forts, where Scotchmen will grumble for a few years before they go over to the Americans, but never a community that will deserve the name of a British colony. THEY DO NOT POSSESS PUBLIC CONFIDENCE. "But the Hudson's Bay Company--the colonial office of this unfortunate new colony--_has positive interests_ antagonistic to those of an important settlement. "It is a body whose history, tendency, traditions, and prospects are _equally and utterly opposed_ to the existence, within its hunting-grounds, of an active, wealthy, independent, and flourishing colony," (we Americans say settlements) "with all the destructive consequences of ruined monopoly and wide-spread civilization."