322 ROBERT CARLTON CLARK
already contemplating the "retirement" that he actually car- ried out a year later and was looking forward to the fulfillment of an ambition for leadership. There is nothing in his char- acter to make such a conclusion improbable. He was of a dis- tinctly masterful temperament and might easily have under- estimated the difficulties in the path of such an ambition. The sequel was to prove something quite different from these an- ticipations. Thus it seems that motives of financial interest and personal political ambition may have been promoting Chief Factor McLoughlin to bring himself, his people and the property of his company under the jurisdiction of the Oregon Provisional Government.
To the Company's superior officers, however, McLoughlin in justifying his action in recognizing and uniting with the new government in August, 1845, advanced only those argu- ments that convinced him that such action best served the interests of the Company and British subjects in general. "We have yielded/' he says, "to the wishes of the respectable part of the people in the country, of British and American origin, by uniting with them in the formation of a temporary and provisional government designed to prevent disorders and maintain peace, until the settlement of the Boundary Question leaves that duty to the parent States" (from McLoughlin Letters of August 30 and November 20, 1845, copies made by Professor Schafer. The second letter is given as first part of Last Letter printed in American Hist. Rev. 21 :1 10-1 16.) To McLoughlin at this time the situation seemed critical. The property of the Company was subject to intrusion and attack, "exposed in the midst of a population living without the re- straint of laws." "A crisis was evidently fast approaching which would drive us to the painful necessity of yielding to the storm, or of taking the field openly, arms in hand, with means so unequal compared to those arrayed against us, as to leave no hopes of success." There seemed to him little hope of receiving any speedy or effective protection either from the British government or the Company, though he had represented
