152 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



they were legal. Thus Chief Justice Reeves wrote in 1793 

 that although it was doubtful whether any one in Newfound- 

 land had any title to any land, many houses fetched £300 or 

 £400 a year; and at last in 181 1 the Home Government 

 made its first plunge into the inevitable, and permitted the 

 sale or letting of land. An English Act was passed which 

 authorized the Governor to grant or let certain vacant ' ships- 

 rooms ' at St. John's as private property in the same way as 

 other land in the colony was granted or let ; and Governor 

 Duckworth promptly let these vacant spots at rackrents on 

 thirty years' leases, renewable on easy terms in case houses 

 of stone or brick were built thereon. In 181 3 Governor 

 Keats was instructed to encourage cultivation by granting 

 ' leases of small portions of land to industrious inhabitants at 

 annual quit-rents \ Accordingly he called for men to send 

 in their claims, noted that 75 acres had been enclosed during 

 the preceding nine months, and that over three square miles 

 were cultivated or enclosed, and began to grant leases of 

 four-acre plots, at 2^. 6d. or 5^. an acre, renewable ' by way of 

 grant' every thirty years *for ever'. Quit-rents were still 

 demanded, but leasehold was changed into freehold, and the 

 circulating decimal into the integer. Permanent private 

 property in land was at last a right as well as a fact, and 

 the colony was admittedly terrestrial. 

 Courts, Permanence and stability were in the air and the Law 



Courts caught the infection. Before 1792 the Criminal 

 Court was periodically created and destroyed, recreated and 

 redestroyed, like the mythical heroes of Valhalla. There 

 was no Civil Court, although the Governor, whose jurisdiction 

 was grounded on that of the fishing-admirals, heard civil 

 cases by consent, and ordered the sheriff to enforce his 

 decisions. In 1781 an unsuccessful civil litigant brought 

 an action against Governor Edwards in Exeter for having 

 cast him in costs in Newfoundland. The action was com- 

 promised, and for the next eight years the Governor closed 



