When order was restored the clever miscreant Riel returned to the settlement. By raising a force to aid in quelling a threatened Fenian {169} invasion, he gulled Bishop Taché and the new governor, Adams G. Archibald, and had himself elected to the Dominion parliament. But Riel's crimes were too recent and too gross to be overlooked. His effrontery in taking the oath as a member was followed by his expulsion from the House; and once more he fled the country, only to reappear in the rôle of a rebel on the Saskatchewan in 1884, and, in the following year, to expiate his crimes on the scaffold. Having carried the Dominion to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, the next step for the government was the acquisition of British Columbia. After the Oregon Treaty of 1846 the British possessions on the Pacific coast lay in three divisions, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and the Stikeen Territory, all in the domains of the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1863, after the inrush of gold-seekers, the two latter had been united under one government and granted a Legislative Council, partly elective. Vancouver Island already had a legislature with two chambers, one elective. In 1865 Amor DeCosmos, one of the members of the Assembly for Victoria, began the union movement by proposing that Vancouver Island should be joined to British Columbia. There {170} was friction between the two colonies, largely on commercial grounds. A tariff enacted by the colony on the mainland proved injurious to the island merchants who flourished under a free port. So in 1866 the Imperial parliament passed an Act uniting the two colonies. Despite the isolation of the Pacific coast settlements from the British colonies across the continent on the Atlantic, the Confederation movement had not passed unnoticed in the Far West; and in March 1867 the Legislative Council of British Columbia adopted a resolution requesting Governor Seymour to take measures to secure the admission of British Columbia into the Dominion 'on fair and equitable terms.' In transmitting the resolution to the home authorities the governor candidly pointed out the difficulties. He was not strongly in favour of the policy. The country east of the Rocky Mountains, it should be kept in mind, was still in the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company. An alien population from the United States was increasing in number. Enormous obstacles stood in the way of communication eastward. 'The resolution,' wrote Seymour, 'was the expression of a despondent community longing for change.' However, a public meeting in Victoria held on January {171} 29, 1868, urgently recommended union. A memorial to the Canadian government declared that the people generally were enthusiastic for the change. The leading newspapers endorsed it. The popularly elected councils of Victoria and New Westminster were of the same mind. Opposed to this body of opinion were the official class and