That such violence and bloodshed as that about Fort Douglas, should be seen by British subjects under the flag which stands for justice and equal rights made sober-minded Britons blush.  While Lord Selkirk’s agents on the banks of the Red River may have been aggressive in pushing their rights, yet to the Canadians was chargeable the greater part of the bloodshed.  This was but natural.  To the hunter, the trapper, and the frontiersman the use of firearms is familiar.  The fur trader protects himself thus from the bear and the panther.  The hot blood of the Metis as he careered over the prairie on his steed boiled up at the least provocation.

But the disheartening law suits through which Lord Selkirk passed in Sandwich, Toronto, and Montreal, reflected more dishonor on the Canadians than did even the bloody violence of the Bois-Brules.  The chicanery employed by the Canadian courts, the procuring of special legislation to adapt the law to Lord Selkirk’s case, and the invocation of the highest social and even clerical influence in Upper Canada for the purpose of injuring his Lordship will ever remain a blot on earlier Canadian jurisprudence.  Fortunately the rights of man, whether native or foreigner, are now better understood and more fully protected in Canada than they were in the second decade of the nineteenth century.  Col.  Coltman’s report, as already stated, was a model of truthfulness, fair play and freedom from prejudice, and Coltman was a Canadian appointee.

So grave, however, were the rumours of these events happening on the plains of Rupert’s Land, as they reached Britain that the House of Commons named a committee to enquire into the troubles.  This committee sat in 1819, and the result is a blue-book of considerable size which exposes the injustice most fully.  The violence and bloodshed which the fur traders now heard of far and near paralyzed the fur trade carried on by both fur companies, and brought the financial affairs of both companies to the verge of destruction.  Two startling events of the next year produced a great shock.  These were sudden and untimely deaths of the two great opponents—­Lord Selkirk at an early age in France, and Sir Alexander Mackenzie, at his estate in Scotland, he having been seized with sudden illness on his way from London.  The two men died within a month of one another in the spring of 1820.  Their passing away was surely impressive.  It seemed like an offering to the god of peace in order that the vast region with its scattered and thunderstruck inhabitants from Lake Superior to the Pacific Ocean might be saved from the horrors of a cruel war of brother against brother, and a war which might involve even the cautious but hot-blooded Indian tribes.

Though the two parties were made up of daring and head-strong men, yet adversity is a hard but effective teacher.