and vary much. We hear of twenty ships in one year, of eighty in another, of 200 or more in a third. As our argument is inferential and cumulative, let us look at the question of value. The earliest detailed presentment I can find in the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial series, is dated the 16th of March 1620. You may say that is sometime after the foundation of Virginia. But the fortune of that colony was yet wavering, and twelve ships loaded with provisions and carrying 1200 settlers had just been sent to her relief. The document was presented to the King, referred to the Secretary of State, and its prayer was in part acted on. Its data were furnished by Captain Mason, the Governor of Guy's Colony from 1615, whose means of information were exceptionally good. It numbers the English fleet then engaged in the Newfoundland trade at 300, and states that its contribution to his Majesty's revenue was £10,000. If we take 5 per cent. to be the rate of duty, and it can scarcely have been higher, the product of the fisheries brought into England must have been worth £200,000 of these days. To translate the sum into current values, one should multiply by six or seven. The petition goes on to show what subsidiary industries benefit by the trade, and concludes that neither in number nor value is it equalled by "any one maritime trade in the kingdom." The total imports of England for that year are given at £2,141,000. Whitbourne, who had been on the coast for forty years and held the first commission to administer justice as vice-admiral, says in his "Discourse" (p. 40): So, again, it is to be considered that yearly from the Newfoundland, as the trade now is, the subjects bring from thence to the value of much above £135,000." On page 45 he ranks it " above the sum of £150,000." Let us take the smaller estimate, in order to be on the safe side. It is made for 1615, and its items are given on page 12. To find its modern equivalent multiply by six and you have £810,000 as the then yearly value of this fishery. Nor will the sum seem excessive if we consult Mr. Thorold Rogers' book on " Prices." He says that, from 1583 to 1623, the price of cod-fish rose from fifty shillings the long hundred to seventythree; that, from 1623 to 1663, it rose from seventythree to eighty-three shillings; and that thereafter it remained stationary for near a century. £810,000 a year! Was Bacon, then, indulging in rhodomontade, as we generally suppose, when he said that these waters had yielded more wealth to England than the mines of Peru and Mexico had afforded Spain? Hav ing given the approximate statement for Newfoundland, I add Humboldt's estimate of Spain's yearly return from the New World: from 1492 to 1521, £52,000; from 1522 to 1545, £630,000; from 1546 to 1578, £440,000; for the rest of the century, £280,000. There was one marked difference between the cases. The flow of American treasure into Spain ceased at a comparatively early date. The wealth this country drew from Newfoundland was regular and permanent as the onflow of the northern current. It rose steadily year by year. In 1640, it amounted to £700,000, by 1670 to £800,000 of the value of the time. Throughout the seventeenth and for a great part of the eighteenth century, it maintained its relative position in the industries of the realm, affording lucrative employment for large numbers of the seamen of England, and contributing its quota to the building up of her world-wide commerce. That this English fishery began at a very early date, was prosecuted with vigour, and attained large proportions before the planting of Virginia, or the opening of the seventeenth century is, I submit, clear. Its bearing on actual settlement springs not merely from the fact that the men of Devon had a practically free field there or dominated all, but from the need of the fishery itself. In order to its successful prosecution, some settlement-some substantial settlement-was necessary for the building, preserving, and repairing of boats, dwellings, flakes, stages, &c., used in curing and drying fish; for the mending of nets and sails; the making of oars and masts; the preparation of train and skins; for the early catch in April and May, and the late harvest in October and November; for the supply of bait at all seasons, and provisioning the ships' crews with fresh food in the place of salt. That we have no direct account of its origin and progress, with dates and numbers specifically set forth, desirable as that may be, does not militate against the general position, for the reason previously given: that precisely the same process, from the same causes, has gone on in the west shore and Labrador within this century, apart from state authorisation, without combined action, without statistical reports. At the same time, such accounts as have come down to us, in their frequent reference to boat-building, cultivation, &c., presuppose settlement. As an example, I take an extract from Whitbourne, from that portion of his "Discourse" (p. 53) where he endeavours to dissipate the prejudices of his countrymen in regard to the alleged coldness of the climate: "And likewise it hath been in some winters so hard frozen in the River Thames above London Bridge, neere the Court, that the tenderest fair ladies and gentlewomen that are in any part of the world, who have beheld it, and great numbers of people have there sported on the ice many days together, and have felt it colder there than men do that live in Newfoundland." The conclusion may be enforced when we call to mind that "250 saill of ships" would carry "above 5000 Englishmen" yearly, or an average of 20 per vessel. Instead of returning home each trip with its risk as to selection of places, its delay in preparation for the season's work, yearly to be renewed; should we not expect that some by preference or arrangement would remain for the common benefit, at first for a winter, and then permanently? By the time the industry had grown to such proportions as to be favoured by Parliament that is, in 1541-it is by no means improbable that the nucleus of a resident population had been already formed. Those who afterwards planted Somers Island or Bermuda came upon it by chance, and were wrecked. The next year, 1610, having built two vessels they continued their voyage to Virginia, and found the colonists reduced from 500 to 60, and on the point of leaving. Their destination was Newfoundland, to which Gilbert, Raleigh, and Gosnold had turned in their distresses; the general haven and storehouse of the North Atlantic, at least from the days of Cartier and Roberval; the one place in America where relief could be obtained. That it should have had no civilised inhabitants or permanent settlers at the time almost passes belief. Our first actual return is for 1626, and gives the then population between Cape Bonavista and Cape Race as 350 families, or 1750 persons. You will recollect that, when James I. issued his charters for the occupation of North America, he divided the continent into two sections-North and South Virginia-and drew the northern boundary at parallel 46, thus including Cape Breton and excluding Newfoundland. She stood apart from her continent at that time very much, I am sorry to add, as she does to-day. She represented then, as she represents now, the middle term, the necessary postulate, between land cultivation on this side of the Atlantic and land cultivation on the other: I mean the fisheries. We may not be able to realise fully the large part they played in the migration of western nations and the civilising of the continent; but the fact that foreign claims still press on her shores may be taken to indicate that these fisheries were of vital importance in the process, and that the struggle for their possession was both keen and long continued. VI One might have expected that as settlement arose. out of a large and profitable trade, it would have grown rapidly, and that we should find in the island to-day, not 230,000 people merely, but more than two millions. The expectation is just, and might have been realised if the plan that succeeded with other English estab |