of all her fisheries, and had she been spared the injurious consequences which flow from the competition, within her own bosom, of a foreign nation.

The population of Newfoundland at present amounts to nearly 100,000 souls, altogether of British birth or extraction. They consume annually the produce of other countries to an amount exceeding £300,000 sterling. They annually export produce equal in value to one million sterling, and there are employed in its fisheries alone not less than 20,000 active, enterprising and able bodied seamen.

The most valuable description of our fish, and such alone as is suitable for the Spanish and Portuguese markets, is taken on the Western Coast and on the Banks of Newfoundland.

The bait essential to these Fisheries is caplin and herring. These fish periodically visit certain parts of the bays and shores of this Island, attracting after them shoals of codfish; they annually return in increased quantities to these localities, where they are not molested, and there occasion a corresponding increase of the fish which make them their prey.

An illicit traffic has of late years been opened between some of your Majesty's subjects in this Island and the French settlers at St. Pierre and Miquelon, which we have no power to check, and by means of which the vessels of the latter are abundantly supplied with bait to the prejudice of the fishermen on our shores, who for want of it are often times unable to prosecute their fisheries, or even to procure a sufficiency of food for their daily consumption. Payment for this bait is made partly in cash, but chiefly in spirits and other articles of French manufacture, which the large bounties given by the French Government to encourage their fisheries enabled the settlers to give liberally in return for so essential an accommodation. These articles are smuggled into our ports to the serious damage of our revenues, and to the demoralization of your Majesty's subjects. A few years ago the French fisheries at St. Pierre was seriously diminished by the exhaustion of the bait within their boundaries, and the French authorities were constrained to forbid the taking of any caplin or herrings around their islands, except for the use of their small open boats. Their necessity stimulated the illicit traffic with the British, whereby their wants have become supplied at our expense, and in consequence of the preservation of their bait, codfish now swarm in their waters, whilst they desert the opposite shores of Newfoundland. We beg to remark that the French fishery is limited only by the supply of bait, and since the supply from our shores has been obtained it has greatly increased: already nearly 300 square rigged vessels, varying from a 100 to 400 tons burthen, besides a multitude of open boats, carrying on the cod fishery from St. Pierre and Miquelon. These obtained last year from the shores of Newfoundland upwards of 70,000 barrels of fresh caplin and about 28,000 barrels of fresh herring; and so intent are the French upon this fishery, and so anxious are they to extend it, that owing to the facilities above referred to, fifty additional square rigged vessels were last summer sent to St. Pierre from France. The consequence is that whilst the British fisheries in the Bays of Placentia and Fortune, and on the Banks, are annually diminishing, those of the French are progressively increasing; in proof whereof we humbly crave permission to state, that last year the French caught nearly one million four hundred thousand

quintals codfish, whilst Your Majesty's subjects all over this Island, have not taken more than one million quintals. The number of French fishermen annually employed in these fisheries already amounts to nearly 20,000; and we feel assured that unless Your Majesty's Government will interpose for our protection the most valuable of the British Fisheries of Newfoundland,-those on the Western shores,will speedily become lost to your Majesty's subjects, and pass into the hands of the people of France.

An apparatus for screwing fish preparatory to its shipment for the South American and West Indian markets has been recently established at St. Pierre, and during the last year your Majesty's subjects have had to compete in Brazil, in the West Indies, and in Portugal with French made fish, caught by British bait.

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The Legislature of this Colony, in the year 1836, attempted to arrest, by local enactment, the destructive progress of this illicit trade, but without success. The commanders of your Majesty's ships war, who from time to time have cruised along our coasts, have successively represented the urgent necessity that exists for the establishment of sufficient protection to our fisheries on the Western shore. The Revenues of the Colony are wholly insufficient for such a purpose, but even were that not so, the service appears to participate more of an Imperial than of a local character.

The presence, during the summer months, of two small armed sailing vessels, or of a steam vessel, would alone suffice for so important a service; and we earnestly hope that when your Majesty recollects that the evils which oppress us arise from causes over which we have no control, it will not be deemed unreasonable in us to crave from the Parent state assistance in those difficulties which the policy of the parent state occasioned.

We know that your Majesty cannot directly prevent the French Government increasing their fisheries in Newfoundland, neither do we ask or expect that your Majesty will grant to your Majesty's subjects a bounty similar to that which so effectually stimulates and invigorates the subjects of France and the citizens of the United States to prosecute the cod fisheries of Newfoundland; but we look with confidence to the maternal solicitude of your most gracious Majesty for that protection in our rights which can only come from the Imperial Government.

We beg to remark that in the year after the treaty and declaration of Versailles in 1783, an Act was passed by the Parliament of England, in the 26th year of the reign of your Majesty's august predecessor of blessed memory, King George the Third, absolutely prohibiting any of your Majesty's subjects in Newfoundland from selling to foreigners any bait whatsoever. All we now most dutifully ask of your Majesty is such assistance as may be necessary to carry the said enactment into practical operation. The mode in which that assistance may be accorded we submit to the wisdom of your Majesty, confident that the prosperity of this colony will engage your most gracious Majesty's solicitude, and that such measures will be adopted by your Majesty's Government as will secure to your Majesty's loyal subjects in Newfoundland that protection which none living under the benign though vigorous sway of the British sceptre, ask in vain.

92909°-S. Doc. 870, 61-3, vol 3—28

Extracts from the journals of the legislative assembly of Newfoundland, 1845.

Report of the Committee of the Newfoundland Assembly appointed in 1845 to enquire into the state of the Fisheries on the Banks and Shores of Newfoundland.

The Bank and Shore Fisheries have engaged the deep attention of your Committee. These important subjects have not hitherto been investigated by the Legislature; they have therefore considered it their duty to take a general review of them from the earliest period.

These Fisheries were coeval with the Colonial dominion and maritime superiority of England Newfoundland was her earliest Colonial possession: the fisheries, the first nursery of those seamen that gained her the dominion of the ocean, and with it her vast unbounded Colonial Empire, and trade of the world.

Soon after the discovery of the Island by Cabot, in the Reign of Henry VII., the fisheries gave employment to a considerable number of ships and seamen. As far back as the year 1549, an Act of the British Parliament (Edward VII.) was passed for the better encouragement of the fisheries of Newfoundland. During the Reigns of Elizabeth, James I, Charles I & II., the trade and fisheries engaged much of the attention of the Crown and Parliament. There were two hundred and sixty ships employed in the Newfoundland fisheries in the Reign of Elizabeth. The seamen nursed in these Fisheries mainly assisted in manning her fleets, which defeated the powerful Armada of Spain.

Charles I. in a commission for well-governing his subjects of Newfoundland, observes, that "the navigation and mariners of the Realm have been much increased by the Newfoundland fisheries." Various Acts were passed in the Reign of Charles II., and measures were adopted to revive the fisheries of Newfoundland, which had greatly declined. The preamble of the Act 10th & 11th William and Mary declared that "the trade and fisheries of Newfoundland is a beneficial trade to the kingdom, in the employment of a great number of seamen and ships, to the increase of Her Majesty's Revenue and the encouragement of trade and navigation."

The Act 15th George III. declares the Fisheries "the best nurseries for able and experienced seamen, always ready to man the Royal Navy when occasion may require; and it is the greatest national importance to give all due encouragement to the said fisheries."

In 1763, Lord Chatham, then Mr. Pitt, negociated in the first instance the Treaty of Paris, which upon his resignation of office was concluded by Lord Bute. Lord Chatham, who had contended, on the part of England, for the whole exclusive fishery of Newfoundland, and affirmed it to be of itself an object worthy to be contested by the extremity of war, censured severely his successor in office for having returned to France some of the privileges which she had before enjoyed upon the coast, and for having ceded, in addition, St. Pierre and Miquelon.

By the Treaty of 1783, additional concessions were made to France in the fisheries of Newfoundland. No part of the Treaty was more uniformly censured than that which related to Newfoundland. The preliminary articles were censured by a vote of the House of Com

mons, and the Minister of the day had to retire; however, the advan tages ceded to the French were confirmed. Lord Viscount Townshend said "The admission of that Nation (the French) to a participation of the Newfoundland fisheries was a piece of the most dreadful policy and concession that ever disgraced a nation."

Mr. Fox said, "It was evident that our fisheries in Newfoundland, so much boasted of, were in a manner annihilated, not to mention the impolicy of ceding St. Pierre and Miquelon.”

Sir Peter Burrell said-" Will any gentleman say that leaving the Americans liberty to dry their fish on the unsettled coast of Newfoundland was the way to prevent disputes: for his part he saw, in the wording of the treaty, an eternal source of quarrels and disputes; and when he considered the footing on which the Americans are with the French, he was not without his apprehensions that the right which the treaty granted to the latter to dry their fish on a coast near 190 miles in length, would occasion various attempts to bring in the Americans to this privilege.'

Lord Mulgrave, on the same occasion said "He considered the Greenland fisheries much inferior to the Newfoundland fisheries." Mr. Pitt expressed similar opinions.

The great advantages, in a national point of view, of the Newfoundland fisheries, have been fully admitted by the most eminent statesmen of a later period. On a motion proposed by Sir John Newport in 1815, in which he expressed his views of the vast importance of the fisheries of Newfoundland, Lord Castlereagh said He concurred with much of what had been said by the Right Hon. Baronet as to the value of these Fisheries; he most completely coincided with him that they were not only valuable as a great source of wealth to the country but they were still more so as a source of maritime strength."

The greatest of trade Ministers, the late lamented Mr. Huskisson, in his celebrated speeches upon the Shipping Interests, Colonial Trade and Navigation, never loses sight of the great importance of the Fisheries. To the support of them, as a great source of the maritime power of England, he assented to a deviation from the great leading principles of his own commercial system. In that eminent Statesman's speech on the Navigation Laws of the United Kingdom, he says

First of the Fisheries

"The ocean is a common field alike open to all the people of the earth; its productions belong to no particular Nation. It was therefore our interest to take care that so much of those productions as might be wanted for the consumption of Great Britain should be exclusively procured by British industry and imported in British ships. This is so simple and so reasonable a rule, that in this part of our navigation system, no alteration whatever has been made, nor do I believe that any ever will be contemplated.”

Sir Howard Douglas said that, "the Fisheries in the British Quarters of America were the most productive in the world: if they were not ours whose would they be? what would be the effect of the total abandonment and transfer to another Power of this Branch of Industry upon our Commercial marine and consequently upon our naval ascendancy?"

Your Committee could without end produce authorities, both British and Foreign, to prove the inestimable value of the fisheries

on the Great Bank and Shores of Newfoundland. The French Government have at all periods duly estimated its importance. The Americans, even before they were separated from the Government of the Parent Country, but more particularly since, have lost no opportunity to extend the Fisheries in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and on the Banks and Shores of Newfoundland. Your Committee would conclude upon this head by referring to the opinion of celebrated French authority, (L'Abbe Raynal,) on the great value, in a commercial and national point of view, of the Newfoundland Fisheries.

"The other Colonies, he says, have exhibited a series of injustice, oppression and carnage, which will for ever be holden in detestation. Newfoundland alone hath not offended against humanity nor injured the rights of any other people. The other settlements have yielded productions, only by receiving an equal value in exchange. Newfoundland alone hath drawn from the depths of the waters riches formed by nature alone, and which furnishes subsistence to several countries of both hemispheres.

"How much time hath elapsed before this parallel hath been made, of what importance did fish appear when compared to the money which men went in search of in the new world. It was long before it was understood, if even it be yet understood, that the representation of the thing is not of greater value than the thing itself, and that a ship filled with Cod and a Galleon are vessels equally laden with Gold:-there is even this remarkable difference, that mines can be exhausted and the fisheries never are. Gold is not reproductive, but the fish are so incessantly."

Your Committee consider it necessary to explain the grounds on which they refer to so many authorities to prove the value of the Newfoundland fisheries. The proposition, as far as they could learn, has never yet been questioned. They were induced to make these references in consequence of the utter neglect with which these fisheries have been regarded by the British Government, since the peace of 1814, on the one hand, and the avidity with which they were prosecuted by the French and American Governments since that period on the other. "Great Britain, who owns, supports, and defends these Colonies and Fisheries, and has derived from them the principal means of defending herself, gave up, at the conclusion of the war, to her vanquished opponents the most valuable portion of her Colonial coasts and waters. To the French in 1814 she conceded the North coast and Western coast of Newfoundland, from Cape St. John to Cape Ray: to the Americans in 1818 she gave up the right of taking fish on the Southern and Western coasts of the same Island, from the Rameau Islands to Cape Ray and from Cape Ray to the Quirpon Islands, to the Magdalen Islands, and on the whole coast of Labrador, from Mount Jolly Northwards to the limits of Hudson's Bay, together with the liberty of using the unsettled parts of Labrador and the Southern parts of Newfoundland, for drying and curing fish." It cannot be questioned that Great Britain, by these concessions, ceded to the French and the Americans the best fishing grounds; and these Governments, to make the most of these advantages, grant large bounties for the encouragement of these fisheries, with the avowed purpose of increasing their maritime strength. Your Committee may therefore state that the Newfoundland fisheries, instead of being,