So much for this most disheartening controversy. It would be idle to say that Lord Selkirk was faultless; but as we dispassionately read the accounts of the trials, and consider that while Lord Selkirk was friendless in Canada, the North-West Company had enormous influence, we cannot resist the conclusion that advantage was taken of his Lordship, and that justice was not done. It is true that, in the majority of cases, the conclusion was reached that it was impossible to precisely place the blame on either side; but we cannot be surprised that Lord Selkirk, harassed and discouraged by the difficulties of his colony and his treatment in the courts of Upper Canada and Lower Canada, should write as he did in October, 1818, to the Duke of Richmond, the new Governor-General of Canada:-- "To contend alone and unsupported, not only against a powerful association of individuals, but also against all those whose official duty it should have been to arrest them in the prosecution of their crimes, was at the best an arduous task; and, however confident one might be of the intrinsic strength of his cause, it was impossible to feel a very sanguine expectation that this alone would be sufficient to bear him up against the swollen tide of corruption which threatened to overwhelm him. He knew that in persevering under existing circumstances he must necessarily submit to a heavy sacrifice of personal comfort, incur an expense of ruinous amount, and possibly render himself the object of harassing and relentless persecution." Though Lord Selkirk crossed the Atlantic in 1818, yet the sounds of the judicial battle through which he had passed were still in his ears. In June his friend, Sir James Montgomery, brought the matter before the British House of Commons, moving for all the official papers in the case. The motion was carried, and the Blue Book containing this matter is a store-house where we may find the chief facts of this long and heart-breaking struggle recorded. In June, 1818, we find in a copy of a letter in the possession of the writer, written by Sir Walter Scott, a reference to the very poor health of his Lordship. Worn out and heart-broken by his trials, Lord Selkirk did not rally, but in the course of a few months died at Pau, in the South of France, April, 1820. His Countess and daughters had accompanied him to Montreal on his Canadian visit, and they were now with him to soothe his dying hours and to see him laid to rest in the Protestant cemetery of Orthes. Though he was engaged in a difficult undertaking in seeking so early in the century to establish a colony on the Red River, and though it has been common to represent him as being half a century before his time, yet we cannot resist the conclusion that he was an honourable, patriotic, and far-seeing man, and that the burden of right in this grand conflict was on his side. CHAPTER XXVIII. MEN WHO PLAYED A PART.