A HALF-CENTURY OF PROGRESS, 1713-63 113 



convoy-captains had ' of publishing orders in our own names winter, 

 to prevent disorders ' in the winter was universal. Their ere ca " e 

 annual absences forced them beyond the judicial into the 1728, and 

 legislative sphere ; and this usurpation was legalized by an '^.f"^- , 

 Order in Council passed in 1728, and constituting the more or less, 

 convoy-captain Governor. From 1729 until 1817 New- z ? 2 9- 

 foundland had Governors who were sometimes quinquennial 

 (1764-68), quadrennial (1813-16), or biennial, but were 

 usually triennial (1729-31, 1735-3?, i75-2, i757~9> 

 1769-71, et seq.), and were very seldom annual, as the 

 convoy-captains used to be before 1724, so that personal ties 

 were formed between Governors and governed. But down 

 to 1817, although for some purposes their office was con- 

 tinuous, they were also captains of ships who had to sail 

 backwards and forwards within the year; and, like the 

 arctic sun, they shone only during the brief summer season, 

 and in their absence the sky was moonless, and for a while 

 unillumined by a single star. 



Various efforts were made to redeem winter from its Local ' de- 



darkness. In 1 7 1 7 the convoy-captain was ordered to repor 

 the name of a suitable winter resident as deputy governor, for winter, 

 but he replied that there was not a man in the island fit for the I ^ J ^> T ? 19 

 post no, not one. His successor in 1719 favoured the idea (- | 

 of appointing as Justices of the Peace several winter residents, 

 among whom W. Keen, a resident of fifteen years' standing, 

 who had recently served as a Commissioner in a special Court 

 convened at St. John's to try crime committed on the high seas, 

 was pre-eminent. But this idea was rejected for the nonce as 

 illegal. In 1723, fifty-one leading men at St. John's, inspired 

 by Locke's Treatise on Civil Government, signed a document A State 

 which recited that men emerged from a state of nature into ^"/f^" 

 a political society by contract, and in which the signatories tract was 

 bound themselves by bonds to elect three rulers every year ' Z 7 2 3- 

 when the convoys were away, and to abide by the decision of 

 the majority of electors. The three first magistrates of this 



VOL. V. PT. IV 



