In course of years political government by trading companies became utterly discredited in England. The government of the East India Company had long been regarded with disapproval; after the great mutiny of 1857 occurred, it was felt to be intolerable. No voice of authority was raised in favour of its longer continuance, and the political functions of the Company were extinguished as inconsistent with the general welfare. The Hudson Bay Company was not more fortunate in its rule than the great sister Company had been. Latterly it had failed to maintain order among the scanty population over which it presided. Occasionally, when its officers pronounced an unacceptable sentence, the friends of the offender forced the prison-doors, and set the prisoner free. The Company was willing to be relieved from the burden of an authority which it was no longer able to exercise. The new Dominion of Canada desired to add to its possessions the vast domain of the Hudson Bay Company. [Sidenote: 1869 A.D.] A transfer which was sought for on both sides was not difficult to arrange. The Company received the sum of £300,000 and certain portions of land around its trading-stations. All besides passed into the hands of the Canadian Government. The authorities who negotiated this transaction seem to have thought mainly of the land, and very little of the people who dwelt upon it. The people now claimed to express themselves, and they did so by methods which were rude and inconvenient. The French and French half-breed population refused to concur in a transfer which they regarded as injurious to their rights. They were sensitive on the subject of their title to the properties which they occupied; and with reason, for many of them had no claim excepting that which occupancy may be supposed to confer. It was rumoured among them that their new rulers intended to eject them from their holdings; and the entrance upon the scene of various surveying-parties was accepted as evidence of this purpose. [Sidenote: 1869 A.D.] The excited people took up arms, and formed a provisional government. Their leader in the rebellion by which they hoped to throw off the authority of Canada and Great Britain, and establish themselves as an independent nation, was Louis Riel, an ambitious but reckless young French Canadian. Riel became President of the new Republic, and gathered an armed force of six hundred men to uphold the national dignity. He turned back at the frontier the newly-appointed Governor; he seized Fort Garry, in which were ample stores of arms and provisions; he imprisoned all who offered active opposition to his rule. The distant Canadian Government looked on at first as amused with this diminutive rebellion. They did not think of employing force to restore order; they sought the desired end by persuasion. The Roman Catholic archbishop of the district was then in Rome, occupied in solving the problem of papal infallibility. He