BRITISH, COLONIAL AND OTHER CORRESPONDENCE, ETC. 571 



manders themselves were said to be, in this respect, faulty. After the 

 fishing season was over, masters beat their servants, and servants their 

 masters. 



The war with France in 1702 as the French, at that period, were 

 masters of Canada, Cape Breton, &c., and were also established, in 

 Newfoundland, at Placentia disturbed the fisheries and other affairs 

 of Newfoundland ; and in 1708, the French took St. John's, and some 

 places in Conception Bay, which they held until the peace of Utrecht. 



In 1708 the House of Commons addressed Queen Anne on the 

 subject of the better execution of laws in Newfoundland, when it was, 

 as usual, referred to the Board of Trade, which only went so far as 

 to get the opinion of the Attorney-General on the statute of King 

 William. 



Two years after, fifteen very useful regulations were agreed upon 

 at St. John's, for the better discipline and good order of the people, 

 and for correcting irregularities contrary to good laws and acts of 

 Parliament. These regulations, or by-laws, were debated and re- 

 solved on at courts, or meetings, held at St. John's; where were 

 present, and had all a voice, a mixed assemblage of merchants, masters 

 of merchant-ships, and planters. This anomalous assembly formed, 

 at the time, a kind of public body, exercising executive, judicial, and 

 legislative power. 



By the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, Placentia, and all other parts of 

 Newfoundland occupied by the French, were, in full sovereignty, 

 ceded to Great Britain; the French, however, retaining a license to 

 come and go during the fishing season. 



The Guipuscoans were also, in an ambiguous manner, acknowl- 

 edged to have a claim, as a matter of right, to a participation in the 

 fishery; which the Board of Trade declared afterwards, in 1718, to 

 be inadmissable. 



Government about this time, as well as the merchants, began to 

 direct their attention to the trade of the island, with more spirit than 

 they had hitherto shown. A Captain Taverner was commissioned to 

 survey its coasts; a lieutenant-governor was appointed to command 

 the fort at Placentia, and a ship of war kept cruising round the island, 

 to keep the French at their limits. 



In 1729, it was concluded, principally through the representation 

 of Lord Vere Beauclerk, the commander on the station, to establish 

 some permanent government, which ended, as Mr. Reeves observes, in 

 the appointment, " not of a person skilled in the law," as had been 

 proposed, but of a Captain Henry Osborne, commander of his ma- 

 jesty's ship the Squirrel. Lord Vere Beauclerk, who set sail for New- 

 foundland with the governor, in the summer of this year, received a 

 box, containing eleven sets of Shaw's Practical Justice of the Peace, 

 being one for each of the following places, which were respectively 

 impressed on the covers in gold letters : " Placentia, St. John's, Car- 

 bonier, Bay of Bulls, Ferryland, Trepasse, Bay de Verd, Trinity Bay, 

 Bonavista, and Old Parlekin, in Newfoundland;" together with 

 thirteen copies of the statute of King William, and the act relating 

 to the navigation and trade of the kingdoms. 



The commission delivered to Captain Osborne revoked so much of 

 the commission to the governor of Nova Scotia as related to New 

 foundland. It then goes on to appoint Captain Osborne governor of 

 the island of Newfoundland, and gives him authority to administer 



