I have alluded to this remarkable man under the soubriquet attached to him for a generation--"the old Bear." I assume that when his son, who for many years represented the Scotch constituency of the St. Andrews Burghs, grew up, the father became the "old" and the son the "young" Bear. Mr. Ellice was the son of Mr. Alexander Ellice, an eminent merchant in the City of London. Born, if the "Annual Register" be accurate, in 1789, he died at the end of 1863. It is strange that he began life by uniting the Canadian fur trade with that of the Hudson's Bay Company, and just lived long enough to witness the sale and transfer of the interests he had, by a bold and masterly policy, combined in 1820. Leaving Canada, Mr. Ellice joined the Whig party, and was returned to Parliament for Coventry in 1818; and, with the exception of the period from 1826 to 1830, he retained his seat till the day of his death. Marrying the youngest sister of Earl Grey, of the Reform Bill--the widow of Captain Bettesworth, R.N.--who died in 1832, leaving him an only son; and, in 1843, the widow of Mr. Coke, of Norfolk, he became intimately connected with the Whig aristocracy. In Mr. Ellice's evidence before the Parliamentary Committee of 1857, on the Hudson's Bay Company, I find that, in answer to a question put by Mr. Christy, M.P., as to the probability of a "settlement being made within what you consider to be the Southern territories of the Hudson's Bay Company?"--he replied, "None, in the lifetime of the youngest man now alive." Events have proved his error. Mr. Ellice was a man of commanding stature and presence, but, to my mind, had always the demeanour of a colonist who had had to wrestle with the hardships of nature, and his cast of countenance was Jewish. According to his own account, he went out to Canada in 1803, when he must have been a mere youth, and then personally associated himself with the fur trade, a trade which attracted the attention of almost the whole Canadian society. It was, in fact, at that time, the great trade of the country. The traders had inherited the skill and organization of the old French voyageurs, who, working from Quebec and Montreal as bases of their operations, were the doughty competitors of the Hudson's Bay Company, many of whose posts were only separated by distances of a hundred miles from those of the French. When Canada became the possession of our country, in the last century, Scotch and English capital and energy reinforced the trade; and, as time went on, a powerful organization, called the "North-West Company," arose, and extended its operations right across to the Pacific.