INTRODUCTION 23 
This, however, was not at all the object which the Eng- 
lish government had wished to accomplish. It had been 
their intention to put the Labrador fishery under the same 
regulations as the Newfoundland fishery. It was to be 
preserved as an “open and free fishery” for the Dorset 
and Devon fishing fleets, and was to be governed by 
fishing admiral rules. The establishment of sedentary 
fisheries immediately caused trouble. It was the old 
story, so familiar in the case of Newfoundland itself, of a 
struggle between the settlers on the shore, who claimed 
the right of exclusive fishing, and the fishermen who came 
over the Atlantic from English ports, and who wanted 
the fisheries and landing-places reserved for themselves. 
Sir Hugh Palliser, the governor of Newfoundland, strove 
energetically to carry out the new regulations. He applied 
to the home government for naval reénforcements, “for 
the purpose of enforcing the fishery laws and preserving 
peace and some degree of order amongst the fisheries, 
especially amongst the mixed multitudes now resorting 
to the new northern banks about the Strait of Belle Isle, 
composed of about 5000 of the very scum of the most 
disorderly people from the different colonies.” He built 
a blockhouse in Chateau Bay, and garrisoned it with an 
officer and twenty men. But his measures were in vain. 
He had to encounter, not only the opposition of the few 
English and French-Canadian settlers on the coast, the 
latter armed with their title-deeds acquired under the 
French governors, but also the hostility of the Canadian 
and New England fishermen, who were excluded from the 
fisheries. The feeling among the New England fishermen 
was especially strong; their exclusion from the Labrador 
