178 ANDREW FISH
the Government of the country may deem it proper and necessary to require at their hands."
London had not so much reason to fear the Americans as had Victoria, and the British Government was quite explicit in expressing its sentiments when it sent a dispatch to Douglas through the distinguished Colonial Secretary, Sir. E. Bulwer Lytton. Douglas was commended for his vigilance, and was promised the help he might need for maintaining order and preserving national rights. However:
"It is no part of their [Her Majesty's Government's] policy to exclude Americans and other foreigners from the gold fields. On the contrary, you are distinctly in- structed to oppose no obstacle whatever to their resort thither for the purposes of digging in those fields, so long as they submit themselves, in common with the sub- jects of Her Majesty, to the recognition of Her author- ity, and conform to such rules of police as you may have thought proper to establish."
Remembering that the Governor was still the chief officer of the Hudson's Bay Company's Victoria post and therefore had what might be called the "Company" attitude toward im- migration and the still unsettled claims to the islands in the Gulf of Georgia, we may attach considerable significance to the fact that Sir E. Bulwer Lytton finds it necessary to include in the instructions the following wise injunction:
"Under the circumstances of so large an immigration of Americans into English territory, I need hardly im- press upon you the importance of caution and delicacy in dealing with those manifold cases of international re- lationships and feeling which are certain to arise, and which but for the exercise of temper and discretion might easily lead to serious complications between two neigh- boring and powerful states."
The tide of immigration was too strong to stem; moreover the attempt to stem it was prohibited by express injunction. But the Company still had its trading monopoly and pro- ceeded to exploit, when it was no longer feasible to exclude, the immigrants. (It may be said by the way that the Com-
