32 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



were in the constant habit of making long fishing voyages, 

 and in 1578 their ships which fished in Newfoundland 

 averaged 52 tons apiece. 1 The model herring buss proposed 

 by Hitchcock was 70 tons. 



commercial Secondly, the fishing politicians were also trading politicians, 

 m a way, anc j p O i n ted out that the fish which were caught were sold in 

 Spain and other parts, and the sellers brought back gold and 

 silver from Newfoundland, as though it were a modern Colchis. 2 

 The fishery in Newfoundland was an industry which created 

 trade, and, although Englishmen of that date did not think 

 that all trade was good, they were quite sure that that trade, 

 which exported non-English products, and imported gold and 

 silver, was good for England. 



andphilan- Thirdly, it was an age of social unrest, of which the increase 

 thropic. o f pasture-lands and enclosures, of townsmen and craftless 

 men, and of vagabonds, paupers, and criminals, were sym- 

 ptoms rather than causes. Many remedies were applied : for 

 instance, in 1547 and 1572 magistrates were ordered to set 

 vagabonds and paupers to work; but on what? Ocean- 

 fishery provided a ready answer ; and Hitchcock's ideal 

 buss carried one captain, twelve sailors, and twelve beggars. 

 Apprenticeship to the new industry was prescribed as a safe 

 cure for pauperism, and the fishing and trading politicians 

 were also social philanthropists. 



(3) Ideal- From the twelve apostles of fishing to the advocates of 

 l niz r colonial expansion, it was only a step, but a long step. The 

 presented seventeen representatives of the colonial school whose names 

 are ment i ne d below * repeated everything that the representa- 



1 Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, vol. vii, pp. 278-9 ; vol. viii, 

 pp. 10, 11. 



2 E. Haie's letter, Dec. 7, 1611, in the Calendar of State Papers, 

 Carew MSS. 



* i. Sir H. Gilbert, Discourse to prove a passage by the North-west 

 to Cathaia and the East Indies, written 1574, published in Hakluyt's 

 Principal Navigations, vol. vii, p. 158, 1576. 



2. R. Hakluyt, Notes . . . given . . . to Frobisher, 1578 ; ib. p. 244. 



3. Sir G. Peckharn, Western Planting, in Hakluyt's Principal 

 Navigations, vol. viii, p. 89, 1583. 



