What the malcontents desired is, perhaps, best explained in the words of their prime mover: "By opening," said he, "the trade in the Bay, many thousands more would be employed in trade, and a much greater vent would be opened for our manufactures. Whereas all the gain we have at present, whilst the trade is confined to the Company, is the employment of one hundred and twenty men in all their factories, and two or three ships in that trade, manned with perhaps one hundred and twenty men in time of war, to enrich nine or ten[62] merchants at their country's expense; at the same time betraying the nation, by allowing the French to encroach upon us at the bottom of the Bay, having given up by that means the greatest part of their trade there to the French. It is, therefore, humbly submitted to the Government, whether it is not just, as well as prudent, to open that trade to all the British merchants, and resume at the same time the charter, so far as to take from them all those lands they have not reclaimed or occupied after seventy years possession, leaving them only their factories, and such lands as they have reclaimed adjoining to them; and to give grants as usual in other colonies to all who shall go over to trade and make settlements in the country; for no grants were ever intended to be made to them, to enable them to prevent other subjects of Britain from planting colonies in those countries, which they themselves would not plant or occupy; for such a power, instead of being beneficial, would be the greatest prejudice to Britain, and is become a general law in the colonies, that those who take grants of land and don't plant them in a reasonable, limited time, forfeit their rights to those lands, and a new grant is made out to such others as shall plant and improve them; and if this grant be not immediately resumed so far and the trade laid open, and some force be not sent to secure our southern possessions in the Bay by the Government in case there should be a French war, we shall see the French immediately dispossess the Company of all their factories but Churchill, and all these countries and that trade will be in the possession of the French." So ran the argument of the Company's enemies. On the 24th of April, 1749, Lord Strange presented, on behalf of the Select Committee, the report to Parliament. "The Committee," said he, "appointed to enquire into the state and condition of the countries adjoining to Hudson's Bay and the trade carried on there; and to consider how those countries may be settled and improved, and the trade and fisheries there extended and increased; and also to enquire into the right the Company of Adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay pretend to have, by charter, to the property of lands and exclusive trade to those countries; have pursuant to the order of the House, examined into the several matters to them referred.