It was at this point the furor arose. It was charged that the Company had bribed Middleton with £5,000 not to find a passage; that he had sailed east instead of west; that he had cast the two Indian guides adrift at Marble Island with scant means of reaching the main shore alive; and that while wintering in Churchill he had been heard to say, “That the Company need not be uneasy, for if he did find a passage, no one on earth would be a bit the wiser.” The quarrel, which set England by the ears for ten years and caused a harvest of bitter pamphlets that would fill a small library—need not be dealt with here. Middleton knew there was no passage for commercial purpose. That the Admiralty accepted his verdict may be inferred from the fact that he was permanently appointed in the king’s service; but Dobbs was not satisfied. He hurled baseless charges at Middleton, waged relentless pamphlet war against the Company and showered petitions on Parliament. Parliament was persuaded to offer a reward of £20,000 to any one finding a passage to the Pacific. Dobbs then formed an opposition company, opened subscriptions for a capital of £10,000 in one hundred shares of £100 each for a second expedition, and petitioned the king for a grant of all lands found adjacent to the waters discovered, _with the rights of exclusive trade. Exclusive trade!_ There—the secret was out—the cloven hoof! It was not because they had not earned their charter, that the Adventurers had been assailed; but because rivals, themselves, wanted rights to exclusive trade. To these petitions, the Company showered back counter-memorials; and memorials of special privileges becoming the fashion, other merchants of London, in 1752, asked for the grant of all Labrador; to which the Company again registered its counter-memorial. The furor materialized in two things: the expedition of the Dobbs Company to find the Northwest Passage in 1746-47, and the Parliamentary Inquiry, in 1748-49, to look into the rights and workings of the Adventurers’ charter.