OF ALL COUNTRIES. 531 



of what is probably the most extraordinary political history 

 recorded of any country whatsoever. About the year 1497 

 John and Sebastian Cabot set sail from Bristol with a small 

 equipment of five ships and 300 men, furnished by the 

 financialist monarch Henry VII., who had just discovered the 

 penny wisdom and pound foolishness involved in ignoring 

 the dreams of Columbus. On the 6th of June, according to 

 some accounts, they sighted the island now called New- 

 foundland, destined from that time to be considered, as a 

 public writer recently observed, in the light of a ship moored 

 in the Atlantic for the benefit of British fishermen ; though 

 the country was not formally annexed to the Crown of 

 England till Sir G. Peacham took possession in the name of 

 Elizabeth in 1583. This was a proceeding which to men of 

 the present day bears no slight resemblance to an act of 

 unblushing impudence, inasmuch as the French numbered 

 150 vessels in those parts, the Spanish 120, the Portuguese 

 about one-third of the former number, and the English not 

 so many as the Portuguese. But overweening scrupulosity 

 was not the most marked characteristic of the worthies of 

 Bideford and Barnstaple, and Bristol, who composed the 

 crews of that famous Elizabethan era. To Sir G. Peacham 

 succeeded Sir Humphrey Gilbert, with the illustrious 

 Walter Raleigh as second in command ; but that halcyon 

 period soon came to an end, and then commenced what 

 may fairly be pronounced to be the most outrageous poli- 

 tical experiment ever tried upon a body of helpless colonists. 

 By a decree of the Star Chamber the immediate govern- 

 ment of the island was placed in the hands of an individual 

 dignified with the title of Admiral ; and that officer obtained 

 his post neither by nomination of the Crown nor by election 

 of the colonists, nor by any other process known to civilised 

 law, but simply by being the skipper of the vessel which 



arrived at Newfoundland the first of the season. This 



2 M 2 



