Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 22.djvu/192



182 ANDREW FISH

was not in a position to undertake the more complicated task of government under gold-rush conditions, Mr. Douglas, as Governor of Vancouver's Island, took it upon him to assume responsibility pending instructions from his home govern- ment. There was, of course, no legislating body for the terri- tory in which the mines were located, and it might seem not unnatural for the Governor to impose a duty on imports on his own responsibility. But did Mr. Douglas collect the tax in his capacity as governor or in his capacity as factor? Mr. Nugent reports that the Company collected through its financial agent, Mr. Finlayson, "and not by the collector of the port." In support of his statement that the Company were the bene- ficiaries, he offers a copy of a permit to enter certain goods for the United States Boundary Commission free of duty. It was signed by Finlayson of the Hudson's Bay Company.

An interpretation of the trading rights of the Company as giving power to levy import duties would not have been so easy to the Governor perhaps, if he had not been so inti- mately related to the Factor. On the face of it, this seems to have been an unusually extreme case of nepotism ! Power of office was not merely kept in the family, but under the same hat. That feelings between the Americans and the British were strained is not to be wondered at when the almost omni- potent Company represented Great Britain.

It was not only in levying taxes that the power of the Com- pany was made oppressive; it was charged that government officials, and even the justices, were unduly swayed by national prejudice. Under the peculiar conditions prevailing, much responsibility rested on officers of the government acting at a distance from the capital. It was charged that Americans, after having spent much money in obtaining a necessary flow of water for mining operations, were unjustly deprived of their water rights in favor of some concern in which the official had been given an interest. At the outlying posts of the Company very often the only persons capable of administering law were