Note 36 — Chapter XIV · 1696-1697.

So strongly has the Treaty of Ryswick been interpreted in favour of France, that some historians merely state the fact that by it she retained all Hudson's Bay, and the places of which she was in possession at the beginning of the war. The commissioners having never met to try the question of right, things remained in statu quo. Now, whatever the commissioners might have done, had they ever passed judgment on the cause the Treaty provided they should try, they could not have given Fort Albany to the British, for it was one of the places taken by the French during the preceding peace, and retaken by the British during the war, and, therefore, adjudged in direct terms of the Treaty itself to belong to France. Thus, then, it will be seen, declared the opponents of the Company, that the only possession held by the Hudson's Bay Company during the sixteen years that intervened between the Treaty of Ryswick and the Treaty of Utrecht was one to which they had no right, and which the obligations of the Treaty required should be given up to France.—Report of Ontario Boundary Commission.