, north of the Columbia, has afforded me opportunities of
becoming familiar with the leading policy of the Hudson's Bay factors in
relation to that region. The means pursued are such as must influence
all the Indian tribes in that quarter strongly in favor of the political
power wielded by that company, and as strongly against the government of
the United States, which has not a shadow of a power of any kind on the
Pacific. Silently, but surely, a vast influence is being built up on
those coasts, adverse to our claims to the territory, and it cannot be
long till those intrepid factors, sustained by the government at home,
will assert it in a manner not easy to be resisted. I embodied these
ideas strongly in my paper. The Secretary was arrested by the justice of
my conclusions, and seemed disposed to do something, but the subject
was, apparently, weighed down and forgotten in the press of
other matters.
_13th_. Hon. E. Whittlesey, Chairman of the Committee on Claims, House
of Representatives, remarks in effect, in a letter of this date, that to
create a just claim against the United States, it must be shown that
property and provisions taken by the troops, when operating in an
enemy's country, were applied to the subsistence or clothing of the
army or navy, although it was private property, and the orders of the
commandant were, in all cases, to respect "private property.
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