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153

NO. XIV.

ON THE THIRD REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF GRIEVANCES.

Ego nugas maximas omni mea comitate sum complexus, Nymphontem etiam Colophonium CIC. AD QUINT. FRAT.

THE SUBJECT RESUMED AND CONCLUDED.

THE petition to the House of Assembly to which this report relates, begins with stating that the petitioner is the lessee from the provincial government of a large tract of land commonly called the King's Posts, with the exclusive right of trading with the Indians within its limits, at the rent of £1200 a year. That the Hudson's Bay Company have obtained a lease at the rent of £300 a year, of a small tract of ground lying within the aforesaid limits, called the seigniory of Mille Vaches, which the petitioner alleges was originally granted, and is now held for the purposes of settlement, but had been used by the Hudson's Bay Company as a trading post, whither they were said to have enticed the Indians of the King's Posts, to the great prejudice of the petitioner and in derogation of the monopoly secured to him by the provincial government. That several civil actions were pending between the Hudson's Bay Company and the petitioner, in which the Attorney General appeared as attorney for the Hudson's Bay Company. This petition proceeds as follows:

"That in an action of Revendication brought by your petitioner in the Court of King's Bench, under the No. 1212,

against a partner and an agent of the said Company, who took and converted to their own use a lot of furs to the value of £1500, belonging to your petitioner, the said Honourable James Stuart has appeared as the private attorney for the defendants.

"That in another action de reintegrande under the No. 642, brought before the said court by the Hudson's Bay Company against your petitioner, the said Attorney General appears as attorney for the said Hudson's Bay Company, the plaintiffs. And that inasmuch as the said action de reinte grande relates to the above named valuable tract of land belonging to the Crown, the said Attorney General has there lent his ministry to persons whose interests were and are adverse to the King's government.

"That actuated by a natural bias in favour of his clients, the said Attorney General has perverted the administration of justice by preferring numerous frivolous indictments against the agents and servants of your petitioner, by repeatedly causing them to be hurried away in custody from the general places at which they were stationed, and by lending himself to facilitate the escape of his clients (the aggressors) when complaints were preferred against them, on which he, as Attorney General, ought to have prosecuted them criminally

with effect.

"That the said Attorney General has even gone the length of appearing for the defendants, a partner and two agents of the Hudson's Bay Company, in three several cases in which our Sovereign Lord the King is Plaintiff, wherein the said partner and two agents or servants had been condemned to pay three several fines for distributing liquors to Indians, and that he so appeared, knowing that the Crown was interested in recovering a moiety of the said several penalties which the said several parties were condemned to pay.

"That the Attorney General has abused his power as Attorney General, to favour the said Hudson's Bay Company his clients, the Provincial rivals of your petitioner, to the great damage of your petitioner, and has deprived your petitioner of that support from the Crown which your petitioner had a right to expect, and that the Attorney General has acted in direct opposition to the interests of the government.

"That your petitioner having found it necessary to apply 'for relief on certain subjects growing out of the contest between your petitioner and the said Hudson's Bay Company, to his Excellency, the Governor-in-Chief, your petitioner has found his Excellency disposed to do him justice to the full extent of his Excellency's power, a disposition of which your

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petitioner has had frequent experience, and in which he feels. the most unbounded confidence.

"But that the matters submitted to his Excellency were of a nature requiring the advice and interference of the law officers of the Crown, and that your petitioner has been deprived of the benefit which he must have derived from the unbiassed opinion and authority of His Majesty's Attorney General from the circumstances above related.

"That your petitioner has the more reason to complain of the position in which the said Attorney General has placed himself with respect to the Crown, inasmuch as of the honourable members of the Executive Council, (the constitutional advisers of his Excellency) one is a partner of the said Hudson's Bay Company, and another the agent of the proprietors of Mille Vaches.

"Wherefore your petitioner complains of the conduct of the said Attorney General, and prays that it may please your honourable House to grant to your petitioner the benefit of an investigation, that justice may be done in the premises, as the wisdom of this honourable house may prescribe."

In the Appendix to the report will be found, besides the foregoing petition and the lease of the King's Posts to the late John Goudie, the opinion of N. F. Uniacke, Esquire, late Attorney General and of George Vanfelson, Esquire, Advocate General, dated 18th April, 1823,* wherein, as the result of an investigation which does not appear on the face of this document to have been very severe, these gentlemen conclude from all the information collected by them on the subject, that the post of Portneuf belonged to that part of his Majesty's domain which was leased to the late John Goudie, under the denomination of the King's Post's.

The gentlemen examined before the committee were the Advocate General and Mr. Gugy, who were both counsel for the petitioner in the court of Quebec; the petitioner himself, the Hon. Francis Ward Primrose, generally retained for the Hudson's Bay either as Counsel or Attorney as it suits them: Captain Bay field who was examined as to the geo

• See Appendix, No. , page

graphical position and extent of the Bay of Mille Vaches, was the only remaining gentleman examined before the commitee.

The correspondence between the law officers of the crown, and the civil secretary, joined to copies of documents as well in the civil as in the criminal prosecutions, constitute the remainder of the appendix.

From these various materials we shall try to extract as succinct an account as is in our power of the transactions referred to by the petitioner, sufficiently extensive however, we hope to enable our readers to judge at once of the reasonableness or unreasonableness of these complaints of the petitioner, and of the correctness of the deductions of the committee.

A letter from the Civil Secretary to the Attorney General, dated the 23d December, 1830, informs the Attorney General that the Civil Secretary had received the commands of His Excellency the Administrator of the Government, to acquaint him that he had received a petition from Mr. Lampson, "stating that he was engaged in a law suit respecting the boundary of the seigniory of Mille Vaches, adjoining the territory of the King's Posts, of which he is the lessee, in which law suit he stated the interest of the Crown to be identified with his own.

"That his lordship would naturally have referred the petition to the Attorney General in regard to certain questions of law which it involved, but that Mr. Lampson having stated that the Attorney General was retained as Counsel for the party opposed to him, his lordship before referring the petition in question, required to be informed whether the assertion of Mr. Lampson was correct, and whether in his opinion the interests of the Crown were identified with those of Mr. Lampson as stated in the petition."

The petition referred to in the letter, it appears was not communicated to the Attorney General; its contents touched the Attorney General both personally and officially; and we must be permitted to express our regret that such an opinion

should have taken place in the high quarter to which the petition was addressed.

The petition, then, which for the first time saw the public light after the presentment of Mr. Lampson's petition to the Assembly, and upon an address of that body to his Excellency, relates the following heads:

"That the petitioner was the sub lessee of the territory known by the name of the King's Posts.

"That the petitioner has been disturbed in the monopoly secured to him by the original lease and the assignment thereof to him.

"The necessity of establishing the metes and bounds of the seigniory of Mille Vaches below Tadousac, of three leagues in front by four in depth, granted originally as the petitioner alledges for the purposes of cultivation; under which grant it is further alledged, that the proprietors and lessees enlarged their possession to five leagues in front, and thereby embracing the trading post of Portneuf at the mouth of the river running from the interior, where they carry on a trade with the Indians of the King's Posts, to the prejudice of the petitioner, and that in consequence of the uncertainty of the limits, breaches of the peace occurred, which rendered necessary the establishment of metes and bounds of that seigniory. "That the lease to John Goudie having been executed by an ordinary deed before Notaries, conveyed in law no legal estate, and the petitioner prayed in consequence, that letters patent under the great seal might be directed to issue, and at the same time that a proclamation similar to that of 1823 should also issue.

"That an action had been lately instituted by the Hudson's Bay Company as lessees of Mille Vaches, by the ministry of the Attorney General against the petitioner and his servants for trespasses near the river Portneuf, (the site in dispute) to which both the Hudson's Bay Company and the petitioner laid claim, the petitioner praying for the interference of the Crown to defend their action.-That the result must be of the utmost importance to the Crown, for an extensive tract of land would be wrested from the Crown should the lessees of Mille Vaches succeed in this action. If they retain possession of the river Portneuf and the post established on the bank of that river there would be an end to the exclusive trade of the petitioner, the river Portneuf being an inlet to the interior through which all the Indians of the

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