A HALF-CENTURY OF PROGRESS, 1713-63 in 



that claimed Newfoundland eliminated one another one by 

 one until only one claimant was left ; and the thing claimed 

 was for the first time clearly conceived. Two centuries of 

 labour were required to bring to the birth these crude and 



elemental ideas. Even then these ideas were not expressed sub J ect to 



the vested 

 whole-heartedly, for the eighteenth century at which we hw$ fishing 



arrived was an age not of chivalry but of sophisters and econo- easc ienis 



J of the other 



mists and calculators, not of martyrdom but of self-interest settling 



and good-humoured tolerance ; and laissez-faire, laissez-aller natwn - 

 was its characteristic motto. Truth was clear, but the fight 

 for truth was tiring, error had its uses, and ' private vices 

 were public benefits '. Difficulties if left to themselves would 

 resolve themselves, and incongruities had better be ignored ; so 

 statesmen who believed in the permanence and progress of 

 English settlers upheld the vested rights of the vagrants, and 

 perpetuated for another eighty years dual control by residents 

 and fishing admirals, and allowed for the next two centuries 

 French as well as English fishermen to haunt the northern and 

 western shores of an English island. The shadow of French 

 dominion survived its substance and hovered banefully over 

 the remoter districts. The conflicting rights of English 

 fishing admirals and settlers in the settled districts, and the 

 prospect of a similar conflict between French fishing admirals 

 and Englishmen in the yet unsettled districts, made political, 

 economic, and social progress slow. 



The third century of the history of Newfoundland began Domestic 

 with a treaty (1713) and ended with a treaty (1818), and was wiiifodis- 

 divided into two half-periods by a treaty (1763), but it had cussed first > 

 already begun to display microscopic germs of constitutional I 7 I 3~ 3> 

 development, and its domestic history must be narrated 

 before its foreign relations are discussed. 



The jurisdiction of the fishing admirals over fishing dis- justice was 

 putes rested on immemorial custom, upon which the Star ^"^^L 

 Chamber (1634) and Parliament (1699) only set a legislative by fishing 

 seal. But custom limited their jurisdiction to fishing-ships' admirah 



