To the philanthropist or the benevolent sympathiser like Lord Selkirk, who aims at benefiting suffering humanity, it is not the trouble, the self-sacrifice, or the spending of money in relief that is the worry, but it is the bitterness, the suspicion, the unworkableness, and the selfishness of the poverty-stricken themselves that disturbs and distresses the benefactor’s heart.  It is often too the heartlessness and prejudice of those who oppose the benefactor’s plans that causes the generous man anxiety and even at times despair.  Poverty in its worst form is a gaunt and ravenous beast, that bites the hand of friend or foe that is stretched out toward it.  So Lord Selkirk found it, when he undertook to help the poverty-stricken Celts of the Scottish Highlands and of the West of Ireland.  He had the sympathising heart; he had the true vision; and he had as few others of his time had, the power to plan, the invention to suggest, and the skill and pluck to overcome difficulties, but the carrying out of his intent brought him infinite trouble and sorrow.  His prospectus, offering the means to the poverty-stricken people of reaching what he believed to be a home of ultimate plenty on the banks of the Red River, was an entirely worthy document.  His first point is, that his Colonists will be freemen.  No religious tenet will be considered in their selection.  This was even freer that was that of Lord Baltimore’s much-vaunted Colony, on the Atlantic Coast, for Baltimore required that every Colonist should believe in the doctrine of the Trinity.  Then, the offer was to the landless and the penniless men.  Employment was to be supplied; work in the employ of the Hudson’s Bay Company, or free grants of land to actual settlers, or even a sale in fee simple of land for a mere nominal sum; free passages for the poor, reduced passages for those who had small means, food provided on the voyage, and the prospect of new world advantages to all.

But the poor are timid, and they love even their straw-thatched cottages, and it needs active and decided men to press upon them the advantages which are offered them.  The Emigration Agent is a necessity.

The fur traders’ country was at this time well known to many of the partners.  It was by employing or consulting with some of these fur traders that Lord Selkirk obtained a knowledge of the Western land which he was to acquire.  Years before the Colony began Lord Selkirk had been in correspondence with an officer who belonged to a well known Catholic family of Highlanders, the Macdonells, who had gone to the Mohawk district in the United States before the American Revolution, and had afterwards come to Canada as U.E.  Loyalists.  One of these, a man of standing and of executive ability was Miles Macdonell.  He had been an officer of the King’s Royal Regiment of New York, and held the rank of Captain of the Canadian Militia.  This officer had a brother in the North-West Fur Company, John Macdonell, who, more than ten years