CHAPTER VI 



A HALF-CENTTJRY OF PROGRESS, 1713-63. 



THE SECOND ANGLO-FRENCH DUEL AND 



ENGLISH VICTORY 



THE Treaty of Utrecht is the half-way house and turning- The history 

 point in the history of Newfoundland. A period of two cen- J ^^ luf 

 turies of continuous development forms both retrospect and is a history 

 prospect ; and these two periods split into two smaller periods, {/^ ies 

 each of a century and each with a character of its own. The and its 

 visitors who came and went like tides and winds, and who em- fa^f/ffa 

 bodied the very spirit of mutability and anarchy, had the first Treaty of 

 century to themselves. Their Being alternated with Not- ^ ' 

 Being ; they lived like seals and thought like geologists ; to 

 them Newfoundland was little more than a sunken fishing- 

 bank with a dry top here and there, and they left indelible 

 traces of their genius on the place. During the next century 

 a few small groups of settlers arrived who were imbued with 

 ideas of permanence, home, and order, but they were over- 

 shadowed by the influences which were already there, and 

 the shy wayside flowers were looked on as exotics when 

 compared to the more garish, transitory, and luxuriant crops 

 amongst which they grew. Time with its cradle and war with 

 its winnowing-fan proved that the future belonged not to the 

 annuals but the perennials. The proof was given at the close 

 of the second century, but the whole of the third century 

 was spent in mastering the proof; and during this third 

 century the visitors became so unimportant, and the settlers 

 so numerous, that it was at last unanimously recognized that 

 Newfoundland, instead of being half colony and half fishing- 

 bank, was a whole colony like other colonies, and with 

 a destiny of its own. The final recognition of this fact 

 ushered in the fourth century of the history of Newfoundland. 



