Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/354



326 ROBERT CARLTON CLARK

tion sent by a committee of the legislature duly authorized on August 14, 1845, met with a prompt acceptance the next day, August 15, by McLoughlin and Douglas acting for the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company, "to become parties to articles of compact."

The Company's officers did not, however, take such action and enter into such a compact without exacting certain condi- tions expressed and implied. Among the expressed condi- tions of the union stated in the letter accepting the invitation made by the legislature consent to the union is based on the provision that the Hudson's Bay Company be called upon to pay taxes only on such sales as may be made to settlers. 9 It is thus stipulated as a first condition that a special concession in taxation shall be granted. A second condition, demanded by McLoughlin and sanctioned by the Legislative Assembly, was that the region north of the Columbia river, which it had been proposed should be divided into two districts named Lewis and Clark, should be created as one district with the name Van- couver. 10

McLoughlin says that the "Ultra party were excessively an- noyed at this being called Vancouver's District, a point we in- sisted on carrying ; it appeared to them a concession of Amer- ican rights, and an avowal of the British claim to the north bank of the Columbia, but the tide set so strongly against them that their opposition was overpowered." A third condition of the union was that all rights of trade enjoyed by the Company should be maintained. A fourth implied condition and one rec- ognized by the changed form of the oath required of officers of the government, was in divesting the organization of all dis- tinctive national character so that it would not interfere with the duties and allegiance of Hudson's Bay Company's officers as British subjects. A fifth implied condition seems to have been that the majority of all the offices established for Vancouver's district should be given to Englishmen. At least of the first

9 See Holman in Quarterly, 13:133-4 and Last Letter, 114. In another letter quoted by Holman, ibid., McLoughlin says "on stock also like any other farmer."

10 Last Letter, 116, No. 21.