For fifty years, the Company had been paying dividends that never went lower than 7 per cent. and generally averaged 10. These dividends were on capital that had been twice trebled. The yearly fur sales yielded from £20,000 to £30,000 to the Adventurers—twice and three times the original capital, which—it must be remembered—was not all subscribed in cash. French hunters had been penetrating America from the St. Lawrence. Bering had discovered Alaska on the west for Russia. La Vérendrye had discovered the great inland plains between the Saskatchewan and the Missouri, for France. It was just beginning to dawn on men’s minds what a vast domain lay between the plantations of the Atlantic seaboard and the Western Sea. It was inevitable that men should ask themselves whether Charles II. had any right to deed away forever that vast domain to those court favorites and their heirs known as the Hudson’s Bay Company. To be sure, Parliament had confirmed the charter when the Stuart House fell; but the charter had been confirmed for only seven years. Those seven years had long since expired, and the original stock of the fur company had passed from the heirs of the original grantees to new men—stock speculators and investors. With the exception of royalty, there was not a single stockholder of the Hudson’s Bay Company by 1740, who was an heir of the original men named in the original charter. Men asked themselves—had these stockholders any right to hold monopoly against all other traders over a western domain the size of half Europe? The charter had been granted in the first place as a reward for efforts to find passage to the South Sea. What had the Company done to find a passage to the Pacific? Sent Knight and his fifty men hunting gold sands in the North, where they perished; and dispatched half a dozen little sloops north of Chesterfield Inlet to hunt whales. This had the Adventurers done to earn their charter, and ever since sat snugly at home drawing dividends on twice-trebled capital equal to 90 per cent. on the original stock, intrenched behind the comfortable feudal notion that it was the manifest design of an All Wise Providence to create this world for the benefit of the few who can get on top and exploit the many to the profit of the aforesaid few.