3091.
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
TELEC.O. 885-
ייןיווווו
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
|ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
MY LORD DUKE,
No. 6.
(BRITISH COLUMBIA.)
LAW OFFICERS to COLONIAL OFFICE.
Lincoln's Inn, March 19, 1860.
We were honoured with your Grace's commands, signified in Mr. Merivale's letter of the 6th of February ultimo, stating that he was directed by your Grace to request that we would take into consideration the annexed letter from the Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company to your Grace, with the statement of [the "claims of the Company to lands in Columbia" thereto annexed, and advise your Grace as to the best course to be adopted under the following circumstances, vis. :
The correspondence between the Hudson's Bay Company and the Colonial Office, ending with the letter from the Colonial Office of the 30th December last, would show that it was desired to obtain a decision from the Judicial Committee of the question whether the Company had or had not any right of property in lands situate within the Colony of British Columbia of which it had obtained no grant from the Crown, nor any title from private owners, but which it alleged itself to have occupied for purposes connected with the fur trade, which it was incorporated to carry on.
Mr. Merivale was pleased to favour us with an explanatory statement of the claims of the Hudson's Bay Company to the lands in question, and of the title of the Crown
thereto.
Mr. Merivale was further pleased to add that he was directed by your Grace to request our joint opinion on the following questions:-
Had Her Majesty's Government, so far as the facts before us disclosed, sufficient grounds for contesting the claim of the company to ownership in fee simple, or in any other form of property known to the law, of the lands specified in the. accompanying statement, and occupied or used by them before the Treaty of Oregon ?
2. If Her Majesty's Government was warranted in resisting this claim, what were the steps now necessary in order to bring the question before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council by consent of both parties ?
Mr. Merivale was also further pleased to ask whether, before proceedings were entered into before the Judicial Committee, there were any additional facts which occurred to us as advisable that Her Majesty's Government should be enabled to prove (if proof be attainable), or any points in the accompanying statement which should not, in our opinion, be admitted without further investigation.
In obedience to your Grace's commands we have carefully considered the several papers submitted to us for our opinion, and have the honour to
Report
That it is necessary in the first place to correct the inference drawn by the Hudson's Bay Company from the terms of the Oregon Treaty, and the construction put upon those terms by the Law Officers in their former Report.
At the time of the Oregon Treaty the Hudson's Bay Company could not have claimed against the Crown the absolute property of the lands they occupied in the territory then ceded to the United States, but it was competent to the Crown to confirm their title, and to recognise them as the owners thereof; and the Crown did so by stipulating with the United States that their possessory rights should be permanently secured to them. The company is indebted to these words in the treaty, and not to any right of ownership as between them and the Crown, for their position as landowners in the ceded territory.
Adverting now to the questions submitted to us in Mr. Merivale's letter, we are of opinion that there are not any grounds on which the company is entitled to claim against the Crown the absolute ownership of any of the lands occupied or used in British Columbia before the Treaty of Oregon.
The utmost right that could have been claimed by the company in the lands so held by them was a title to occupy the lands as necessary for the full enjoyment of the license granted to them during the continuance of that licence. That licence expired in May 1859, and there are no legal grounds on which the company can claim, as of right, any ownership in the lands specified in the statement now before us.
0 14976.-—-—-535. 15.-9/86.
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