The old Company see-saws--is afraid of such advice, is still more afraid not to take it. They vote to reject “Mr. Robertson’s proposals” in January of 1810, and in December of the same year vote a complete turn-about “to accept Mr. Robertson’s suggestions,” authorizing Maitland, Garden & Auddjo, a legal firm of Montreal, to spend £1,000 a year and as high as £20,000 if necessary, to equip expeditions for the North. William Bachelor Coltman is appointed to look after the Company’s clients in Quebec city, and the Hudson’s Bay changes its entire system of trade. Barter is to be abolished. Accounts are to be kept. Each year’s outfit is to be charged against the factor, and that factor is to have his own standard of money prices. One-half of all net profits goes to the servants--one-sixth to the chief factor, one-sixth to the traveling traders, one-sixth to the general laborers. General superintendents are to have salaries of £400 a year; factors, £150; traders, £100; clerks, £50; and servants are to have in addition to their wages thirty acres of land, ten extra acres for every two years they serve. It was as if the Governing Committee of London were the heart of a dying body and these proposals the spasmodic efforts to galvanize the outer extremities of the system into life. At this stage Lord Selkirk came into action with a scheme that not only galvanized the languid Company into life, but paralyzed the rival Nor’Westers with its boldness. [Illustration: Lord Selkirk, Founder of the First Settlement on Red River, 1812, from a Photograph in the Ontario Archives.] After buying control in the Company, Selkirk had laid the charter before the highest legal critics of England. _Was it valid? Did the Company possess exclusive rights to trade, exclusive rights to property, power to levy war?_ That was what the charter set forth. Did the Company possess the rights set forth by the charter? _Yes or no--did they?_” The highest legal authorities answered unequivocally--Yes: the Company possessed the rights. It was perfectly natural that legal minds trained in a country, where feudalism is revered next to God, should pronounce the chartered rights of the Hudson’s Bay Company valid. One fact was ignored--the rights given by the charter applied _only to regions not possessed by any other Christian subject_. Before the Hudson’s Bay Company had ascended the Saskatchewan, French traders had gone west as far as the Rockies, south as far as the Missouri, and when French power fell, the Nor’Westers as successors to the French had pushed across the Rockies to the Pacific, north as far as the Arctic, south as far as the Snake. It was perfectly natural that the Nor’Westers should regard the rights of first possession as stronger than any English charter.