The brave pioneers of Oregon, without waiting for authority of Congress, raised the American flag, organized a territorial government, elected officials to make and execute laws, and from 1843 to 1848, without the aid of Congress, by a single official act, they carried on the government as becomes good citizens of the Republic. True, there were murmurings in Congress as of old, but they were only half-hearted, and half in earnest. The final signing of the treaty in 1846 was the doom, however, of the regime of England in Oregon. _England in its Saddle_ She did not wait for signatures to the treaty to set on foot an inquiry, as to the loss of Oregon, or who was responsible for it, and how this great immigration from the states had originated. The English company forthwith sent a commission, made up of Messrs. Peel, Park, and Wavaseur, to Oregon, to learn all the facts. When they reached there they had an easy task, for both Englishmen and Americans understood the matter. When Whitman and Spalding, with their wives, caught up with the convoy of fur-traders, in that memorable journey in 1836, one of the old voyageurs who had felt the iron hand of the Hudson Bay Company, sententiously remarked, as he pointed his finger at the two American women, "There is something the royal Hudson Bay Company and its masters can't drive out of Oregon!" And it proved true prophecy. We have already noted the courtesy and kindness with which Dr. John McLoughlin, the chief factor, received the missionaries. The London officials soon learned that they had to deal with but one man, and he was in their power. If that interview between the doctor and these eminent Englishmen, who had grown great and rich through his management, could be fully reported, it would doubtless make interesting reading. However modern historians may differ as to the cause of the sudden large immigration of Americans to Oregon, the commissioners from London had no doubt upon the subject. They made the direct charge that it was due to McLoughlin's over-kindness to the missionaries, that had he treated them as he did the American traders, such conditions would not have existed. It mattered not that the good old doctor knew that the charge was substantially true, and yet he arose in righteous indignation, and replied: "What would you have? Would you have me turn a cold shoulder on the men of God, who came to do for the Indians, that which this company had ever neglected to do? If we had not helped them, and the immigrants of '42 and '43, Fort Vancouver would have been destroyed, and the world would have treated our inhuman conduct as it deserved. Every officer of the Company, from governor down, would have been covered with obloquy and the business ruined."