A HALF-CENTURY OF PROGRESS, 1713-63 119 



semblance to free wage-earners than any other class in any 

 other colony in that century. If they stayed in the colony they 

 soon merged themselves in the class of boat-owning employers, 

 who also sometimes acted as employees; but having once 

 sold their labour to a high bidder, and having learnt tlie 

 advantages of mobility, they often went further and fared 

 better. Ever since 1660 anathemas after anathemas were 

 hurled against New Englanders for ' stealing away ' sailors, 

 who went to Newfoundland from England, and ought to have 

 returned but did not return to England. In modern 

 language, this meant that the English sailors regarded them- 

 selves as wage-earners, that higher wages were paid in 

 Newfoundland than in England, and in New England than 

 in Newfoundland, and that labour was beginning to respond 

 to the laws of supply and demand. In the eighteenth 

 century efforts were made to compel and to punish as well as 

 to anathematize ; but it was in vain that men warred against 

 the laws of Political Economy. 



In the early years of the eighteenth century New ~Eng- and efforts 

 landers, who used to bring provisions both solid and liquid 

 to Newfoundland and had all the American carrying trade in wage- 

 their own hands, were ordered to execute, and invariably 



executed bonds not to take passengers from Newfoundland to New Eng- 

 New England, but invariably violated these bonds with perfect 

 impunity. At the close of the season of 1719, Captain Ogle 

 resolved to suppress the trade once for all, and contrived 

 a masterstroke of policy, ordering all the New Englanders to 

 sail out of St. John's under his convoy, when he sailed home. 

 To his surprise they cheerfully obeyed. Then the conveyers 

 and convoyed parted company, the former returning to 

 England to report that the illicit traffic was at last finally 

 stamped out, and the latter returning to St. John's to crowd 

 their ships with forbidden passengers. 1 After Ogle's master- 

 stroke had failed, these dead-letter Ordinances of the Little 



1 Dispatch of Captain Percy, Oct. 13, 1720. 



