money to buy over our traders, and when bribes would not suffice they shot us in the forest. Is this the condition of British subjects? No wonder we fought for our rights. And now you ask us to ' share equally ' the profits of the trade. I do not object to the union, God knows I regretted the war, but ought we to give an equal share of those profits they never raised a finger to obtain, nay, did all they could to discourage and destroy? What reward have we for those years of toil and trial if we hand over the moiety now to a rival? It is not right, it is not just, and in behalf of the Northwest Company I contend for better terms."
So spoke young McLoughlin, in that London wareroom eighty years ago. The very clerks, amazed, stopped scratching with their quill pens in the dim candle-light to listen. They watched him with breathless interest, the Canadian merchants proud of their champion, the British baronets and stockholders wondering if of such stuff was made the rebels of the American Revolution. But he was not yet done.
"Gentlemen, if I contend for better terms for ourselves, what shall I say for our voyageurs, yours as well as ours, who upon a pittance of seventeen pounds a year must man our boats and pack our furs? Wading in icy waters, cordelling canoes in rocky torrents, transforming themselves into beasts of burden at every portage, working eighteen hours out of the twenty-four, cut off from all refinements of social and civilized life, condemned to exile and rapidly sinking to the level of savages, all this that the inordinate profits of their muscles and sinews may pour wealth into the coffers of this trade. Gentlemen, let us consider the hardships of our employe's' lives and realize that seventeen pounds
