e license to trade in
any part of the Indian territory--a renewal which could be justified
to Parliament only as part of a general agreement adjusted on the
principles of mutual concession--would become impossible.

These representations failed to influence the Company. The
Deputy-Governor, Mr. H.H. Barens, responded, that, as, in 1850, the
Company had assented to an inquiry before the Privy Council into the
legality of certain powers claimed and exercised by them under their
charter, but not questioning the validity of the charter itself, so, at
this time, if the reference to the Privy Council were restricted to the
question of the geographical extent of the territory claimed by the
Company, in accordance with a proposition made in July, 1857, by Mr.
Labouchere, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, the directors
would recommend to their shareholders to concur in the course suggested;
but must decline to do so, if the inquiry involved not merely the
question of the geographical boundary of the territories claimed by
them, but a challenge of the validity of the charter itself, and, as a
consequence, of the rights and privileges which it professed to grant,
and which the Company had exercised for a period of nearly two hundred
years. Mr. Barens professed that the Company had at all times been
willing to entertain any proposal that might be made to them for the
surrender of any of their rights or of any portion of their territory;
but he regarded it as one thing to consent for a consideration to be
agreed upon to the surrender of admitted rights, and quite another to
volunteer a consent to an inquiry which should call those rights in
question.

A result of this correspondence has been the definite refusal of the
Crown to renew the exclusive license to trade in Indian territory.
The license had been twice granted to the Company, under an act of
Parliament authorizing it, for periods of twenty-one years,--once
in 1821, and again in 1838. It expired on the 30th of May, 1859. In
consequence of this refusal, the Company must depend exclusively upon
the terms of their charter for their special privileges in British
America. The charter dates from 1670,--a grant by Charles II. to Prince
Rupert and his associates, "adventurers of England, trading into
Hudson's Bay,"--and is claimed to give the right of exclusive trade and
of territorial dominion to Hudson's Bay and tributary rivers. By the
expiration of the exclusive licens