1058 MISCELLANEOUS. 



Extracts from the journals of the legislative assembly of Newfound- 

 land, 184o. 



Report of the Committee of the Newfoundland Assembly appointed in 1845 to 

 enquire into the state of the Fisheries on the Banks and Shores of Ncic- 

 foundland. 



The Bank and Shore Fisheries have engaged the deep attention 

 of your Committee. These important subjects have not hitherto 

 been investigated by the Legislature ; they have therefore considered 

 it their duty to take a general review of them from the earliest 

 period. 



These Fisheries were coeval with the Colonial dominion and mari- 

 time superiority of England. Newfoundland was her earliest Colo- 

 nial possession: the fisheries, the first nursery of those seamen that 

 gained her the dominion of the ocean, and with it her vast unbounded 

 Colonial Empire, and trade of the world. 



Soon after the discovery of the Island by Cabot, in the Reign of 

 Henry VII., the fisheries gave employment to a considerable number 

 of ships and seamen. As far back as the year 1549, an Act of the 

 British Parliament (Edward VII.) was passed for the better en- 

 couragement of the fisheries of Newfoundland. During the Reigns 

 of Elizabeth, James I, Charles I & II., the trade and fisheries en- 

 .gaged much of the attention of the Crown and Parliament. There 

 were two hundred and sixty ships employed in the Newfoundland 

 fisheries in the Reign of Elizabeth. The seamen nursed in these 

 Fisheries mainly assisted in manning her fleets, which defeated the 

 powerful Armada of Spain. 



Charles I. in a commission for well-governing his subjects of New- 

 foundland, observes, that " the navigation and mariners of the Realm 

 have been much increased by the Newfoundland fisheries." Various 

 Acts were passed in the Reign of Charles II., and measures were 

 adopted to revive the fisheries of Newfoundland, which had greatly 

 declined. The preamble of the Act 10th & llth William and Mary 

 declared that " the trade and fisheries of Newfoundland is a bene- 

 ficial trade to the kingdom, in the employment of a great number of 

 seamen and ships, to the increase of Her Majesty's Revenue and the 

 encouragement of trade and navigation." 



The Act 15th George III. declares the Fisheries " the best nurseries 

 for able and experienced seamen, always ready to man the Royal 

 Navy when occasion may require ; and it is the greatest national im- 

 portance to give all due encouragement to the said fisheries." 



In 1763, Lord Chatham, then Mr. Pitt, negociated in the first 

 instance the Treaty of Paris, which upon his resignation of office 

 was concluded by Lord Bute. Lord Chatham, who had contended, 

 on the part of England, for the whole exclusive fishery of Newfound- 

 land, and affirmed it to be of itself an object worthy to be contested 

 by the extremity of war, censured severely his successor in office for 

 having returned to France some of the privileges which she had 

 before enjoyed upon the coast, and for having ceded, in addition, 

 St. Pierre and Miquelon. 



By the Treaty of 1783, additional concessions were made to France 

 in the fisheries of Newfoundland. No part of the Treaty was more 

 uniformly censured than that which related to Newfoundland. The 

 preliminary articles were censured by a vote of the House of Com- 



