Chief, certainly, of the actors who appeared on this stage was Lord Selkirk. Born to the best traditions of the Scottish nobility, Thomas Douglas belonged to the Angus-Selkirk family, which represented the Douglases of Border story, one of whom boasted that no ancestor of his had for ten generations died within chambers. Lord Daer, as his title then was, had studied at Edinburgh University, was an intimate friend of Sir Walter Scott, and though a Lowlander, had formed a great attachment for the Highlanders and had learned their language. He was, moreover, of most active mind, broad sympathies, and generous impulses. At the age of thirty years, having become Earl of Selkirk, he sought to take part in assisting the social condition of Britain, which was suffering greatly from the Napoleonic wars. He took a large colony of Highlanders to Prince Edward Island, acquired land in Upper Canada and also in New York State, and then, solely for the purpose of helping on his emigration project, entered on the gigantic undertaking of gaining control of the Hudson's Bay Company. In all these things he succeeded. We have seen the conflicts into which he was led and the manly way in which he conducted himself. We do not say he made no mistakes. We frankly admit that he went beyond the ordinary powers of a magistrate's commission at Fort William. But we believe his aim was good. He was convinced that the Nor'-Westers had no legal right to the Hudson's Bay Company lands over which they traded. He believed them to be unscrupulous and dangerous, and his course was taken to meet the exigency of the case. It must be remembered his responsibility was a great one. His Highland and Irish colonists at Red River were helpless; he was their only defence; no British law was present at Red River to help them. They were regarded as intruders, as enemies of the fur trade, and he felt that loyalty and right compelled him to act as he did. No doubt it seemed to the Canadian traders--who considered themselves as the successors of the French who, more than three-quarters of a century before, had established forts at what was called the post of the Western Sea--a high-handed and even foolhardy thing to bring his colony by way of Hudson Bay, and to plant them down at the forks on Red River, in a remote and probably unsuccessful colony. However, in the main the legal right was with his Lordship. The popular feeling in Canada toward Lord Selkirk was far from being a pure one, and a fair-minded person can hardly refrain from saying it was an interested and selfish one.