MISCELLANEOUS. 1173 



was attributed to the boat fishery, carried on by the inhabitants there. 

 Sir Josiah Child,* the leading authority of the day in matters of trade 

 and commerce, sounded the note of alarm, anticipating that, if the 

 resident fishermen continued to increase, they would, in the end, 

 carry on the whole fishery, and that the nursery of British seamen 

 would be destroyed. The only remedy he proposed was the annihila- 

 tion of the boat fishery. Never was a more unjust expedient con- 

 ceived. The labors, the expenditures, and sacrifices, of a large num- 

 ber of eminent and adventurous men, who had devoted life and for- 

 tune to the colonization of Newfoundland, were thus to be counted as 

 worthless, and even injurious to the realm. But the views of Child 

 were adopted by the Lords of Trade and Plantations, f who deter- 

 mined to break up and depopulate the colony. Sir John Berry was 

 accordingly sent over, with orders to drive out the fishermen, and burn 

 their dwellings. The extent of his devastations under this more than 

 barbarous decree may not be certainly known; but six years elapsed 

 before the mandate of destruction was revoked, and its abrogation 

 was accompanied with instructions to allow of no further emigrations 

 from England to the doomed island. Complaints were made that 

 emigration continued, and various plans were suggested to discourage 

 and prevent it. Meantime, the relations between the resident fisher- 

 men and the masters and crews of the ships sent out by the English 

 merchants were hostile to an extent which, at the present day, seems 

 almost incredible. Previous to the edict just noticed, the former had 

 petitioned the King for the establishment of some form of government, 

 to protect them against the rapacity of their own countrymen the 

 latter. The merchants opposed the measure, as injurious to the fish- 

 eries, and prevailed. The petition of the residents was renewed from 

 time to time, but never with success; and they continued to suffer 

 wrongs and cruelties without redress. 



The merchants convinced the ministry, or the Lords of Trade and 

 Plantations, that the appointment of a governor, and the recognition 

 of the full rights of the inhabitants of Newfoundland as British sub- 

 jects, would produce the ruinous results anticipated by Child, and, 

 strange as it may appear, no Englishman could lawfully have a home 

 on that island for a long period. 



The edict of 1670, to burn and destroy, had the effect, possibly, to 

 increase the number of ships, since, four years afterward, two nun- 

 dred and seventy, employing, on board and on shore, ten thousand 



* Sir Josiah Child was a merchant. It is said that he acquired great wealth in the 

 "management " of the East India Company's stock. When his daughter married the 

 eldest son of the Duke of Beaufort, he gave her a portion of 50,000. Sir Josiah had 

 fish-ponds in Epping forest, "many miles in circuit." 



t The Board of Trade and Plantations was of no service to the American colonies, 

 though created for the special purpose of attending to their interests. Mr. Burke, in a 

 speech in the House of Commons, in 1780, thus spoke of it: "This board is a sort of 

 temperate bed of influence a sort of gently-ripening hot-house-^-where eight members 

 of Parliament receive salaries of a thousand a year, for a certain given time, in order 

 to mature, at a proper season, a claim to two thousand, granted for doing less, and on 

 the credit of having toiled so long in that inferior laborious department. I have known 

 that board, off and on, for a great number of years. Both of its pretended objects have 

 been much the objects of my study, if I have a right to call any pursuits of mine by so 

 respectable a name. I can assure the House and I hope that they will not think that 

 I risk my little credit lightly that, without meaning to convey the least reflection 

 upon any one of its members, past or present, it is a board which, if not mischievous, is 

 or no use at all." 



