150 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



specialland In the first half of the eighteenth century the Act of 1699, 

 grants^ which forbad fishermen to dispossess inhabitants who occupied 

 sites upon the shore continuously since 1685, 'protection 

 orders ' and ' exclusive licences ' granted by Governors to 

 salmon-catchers, and ' permissions ' by Governors to men 

 like Collins, Keen, and Gill, to ' encroach ' upon the free 

 shore — created, or seemed to create, landed tenures in vague 

 language about the meaning of which legal pundits differed ; 

 but no one owned so much as a square inch of land or water 

 in Newfoundland, except in one of these imperfect ways or 

 by one of these ambiguous means. In 1775 Palliser's Act 

 superseded the provision of the Act of 1699, which established 

 1685 as the date from which time began to run, by making all 

 vacant spaces ' shiprooms', thereby suggesting that non- vacant 

 spaces belonged to their possessors, who could not be ousted 

 from their possession by the vagrant fishermen, who were their 

 only serious rivals. A new right of property was created by 

 implication. Again Dunn, D'Ewes Coke, and perhaps Dr. S. 

 Gardner, were rewarded by the Governor with land-grants 

 for their services in the custom-house ; and magistrates like 

 S. Hutchings were similarly rewarded, either by land-grants, 

 or by being allowed to appropriate to their own use half the fees 

 paid to them by publicans for their licences ; while constables 

 were sometimes paid for their services by obtaining licences 

 as publicans on payment of nominal fees. There were no 

 means of remunerating public officials except by privileges, 

 and the greatest of these privileges was a land-grant by the 

 Governoi*. By far the most important recipients of this 

 species of reward were the military and naval officers who 

 guarded Newfoundland from invasion. * The principal (in- 

 closures),' said Aaron Graham, 'have been made in conse- 

 quence of grants to the officers of the respective military 

 corps doing duty in the island ' — which grants were sold to 

 private people by the officers when they left ; and he 

 added that ' grants have also been made to officers in the 



