1 August 1993
2
3
4 The Political and Economic Rights of the Peoples of the
5 North-West Territories
6
7 ............edited by Marijan Salopek
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9 ===================================
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11
12 Letter from Alex. Christie, Governor of Assiniboia, to
13 Messrs. James Sinclair, Bapti Larocque, Thomas Logan
14 and others.
15
16 Fort Garry, Red River, 5 September 1845
17
18 Gentlemen,
19 I received your letter of 29th Ultimo on the evening of the
20 3rd instant; and I am sure that the solemn and important
21 proceedings in which I was yesterday engaged, will form a
22 sufficient apology for my having allowed a day to pass without
23 noticing your communications.--
24 However unusual it may be for the rulers of any country to
25 answer legal queries, in any other way than through the Judicial
26 tribunals which alone can authoritatively decide any point of
27 law, I shall on his particular occasion overlook all those
28 considerations, which might otherwise prompt me to decline with
29 all due courtesy the discussion of your letter; and I am rather
30 induced to adopt this course by your avowal for which I am bound
31 to give you full credit, that you are actuated by an
32 unwillingness to do any thing in opposition either to the Laws of
33 England, or to the Hudson's Bay Company's privileges.--
34 Your first nine queries as well as the body of your letter,
35 are grounded on the supposition, that the HalfBreeds possess
36 certain privileges over their fellow citizens, who have not been
37 born in the coutnry.-- Now as British subjects, the halfbreeds
38 have clearly the same rights in Scotland or in England as any
39 person born in Great Britain; and your own sense of natural
40 justice will at once see, how unreasonable it would be to wish to
41 place Englishmen and Scotchmen on a less favorable footing in
42 Rupert's Land than yourselves.-- Your supposition further seems
43 to draw a distinction between halfbreeds and persons born in the
44 Country of European parentage; and to men of your intelligence I
45 need not say that this distinction is still less reasonable than
46 the other.--
47 Your tenth query is fully answered in these observations on
48 your first nine queries.--
49 Your eleventh query, assumes that any purchaser of lands,
50 would have the right to trade furs, if he had not "Willed" it
51 away by assenting to any restrictive condition. Such an
52 assumption, of course, is inadmissible in itself, and
53 inconsistent, even with your own general views, the condition of
54 tenure, which, by the bye, have always been well understood to
55 prohibit any infraction of the Company's privileges, are intended
56 not to bind the individual, who is already bound by the
57 fundamental law of the Country, but merely to secure his lands as
58 special guarantee for the due discharge of such his essential
59 obligation.--
60 After what has just been said, your twelfth query becomes
61 wholly unimportant.--
62 Your fourteenth query, which comprises your thirteenth, and,
63 in fact, also all the queries that you either have or could have,
64 proposed, requests me to enumerate the peculiar privileges of the
65 Hudson's Bay Company, on the alleged ground that you know them
66 only by report, considering that you have the means of seeing the
67 charter, and the land-deed, and such enactments of the Council of
68 Ruperts Land as concern your selves and your fellow citizens, and
69 considering further that in point of fact, some of you have seen
70 them, I cannot admit that you require information to the extent,
71 which your profess and even if you did require it, I do not think
72 that I could offer you anything more clear than the documents
73 themselves are, on which any enumeration of the Company's rights
74 must be based. If however any individual among you or among your
75 fellow citizens should at any time feel himself embarrassed in
76 any honest pursuit by legal doubt, I shall have much pleasure in
77 affording him a personal interview.--