CANADA.

Otago Witness, Issue 317, 26 December 1857, Page 3

CANADA.

The citizens of Toronto held a meeting in St. Lawrence Hall on the 26th August, to protest against the continuance of the Hudson's Bay Company's monopoly. The Mayor occupied the- chair. The speakers, who seem to have very fairly represented the community; passed strong resolutions. They declared their opinion that "every part of that, vast portion of the American continent which is held by. the Hudson's Bay Corporation should- be/wholly enfran-i - chised from ,lhe iron sway of that company, and thrown open to .commercial enterprise-, traffic, and tra*de', in\as free and unrestricted % a. manner as- any other portion of British -dopiriiohs." . They censured the Govern- - s Trfen't for "sending . Chief Justice Draper to i Englknd " without any specific instructions f discretion so unlimited • "as to, place Mm at liberty "to .urge? views upon the Imperial authorities which' he

knew and acknowledged -were not shared in by the people he was appointed to represent." Captain Kennedy, who had just returned from a mission to the Red River j settlement, mentioned, as a proof of its fer.tility, " that six miles square of the Red River district "would yield a revenue exceeding all the revenue of the fur trade of the company put together. This may appear extraordinary, but it was no less true, and figures could be furnished in proof. Wheat has been harvested, yielding a return of 40 to 60 bushels and weighing from 60 pound to 70 pound the bushel. In the valley of the Saskatchewan there was land equally productive. And was this the land that the people of Canada would desire to see locked up as' fur-trading grounds, until the Americans take it and maintain possesI sion ?" The meeting condemned the CaI nadian Government for ceding to the Company the fee-simple, for the sum of £50, of 46,000 acres of Canadian territory, including the mouths of of the six principal rivers leading from the Canadian Lakes far into the interior, and commanding the trade of the far North. They resolyed to present an address to the Queen praying that the Gompany's charter might not be renewed.