giving a good account of the merchandise intrusted to my care, and receiving a reward for my labours. In the morning he took his leave, wishing me the speedy arrival of some Indians who might be able to relieve me from such pressing necessity by supplying me with plenty of more nourishing and palatable food.
[127] This civility from one of the Hudson's Bay Company's servants leads me to make some few observations in vindication of that respectable body, whose character has been so severely, and I think so unjustly, censured.
Mr. Joseph Robson, one of the company's servants,
who resided in their factory six years as surveyor and
supervisor of the buildings, in a work published by him
some years since,[1] animadverts in very strong terms on
the mode in which the governors of forts exert what he
calls their uncontroulable authority, and asserts that their
extreme tyranny is a perpetual source of personal disgust.
He also says, that "the overplus trade is big with iniquity,
and no less inconsistent with the company's true interest,
than it is injurious to the natives, who by means of it are
become more and more alienated, and are either discouraged
from hunting at all, or induced to carry all
their furs to the French." It may be necessary here to
observe, that the overplus trade arises from the peltry
which the company's servants obtain in barter with the
————
- ↑ Joseph Robson went out to Hudson Bay in 1733, as a stone-mason, and was employed in the construction of Fort Churchill. He appears to have had disagreements with the governor, and returned to England in 1736. In 1744, he was again sent out as surveyor and superintendent of buildings at York factory, and explored the Nelson River. Returning to England in 1747, he testified on behalf of the Company in 1749, before the House of Commons committee; but some years later published a work, An Account of Six Years' Residence in Hudson's Bay (London, 1752), in which he animadverts against the treatment of servants and Indians by the Company's governors. Long attempts to controvert him in this paragraph; but on p. 170 he uses his testimony in favor of the management of the Company.—Ed.
