there will be a very great trade in the fish they call stockfish.

"They say, now they know where to go, the voyage will not take more than fifteen days if fortune favours them after leaving Ibernia ... The Admiral, as Messer Zoanne is already styled, has given his companion, a Burgundian, an island, and has also given another to his barber, a Genoese, and they regard themselves as Counts, and my lord the Admiral as a Prince. And I believe that some poor Italian friars will go on the voyage, who have the promise of being Bishops. And I, being a friend of the Admiral, if I wished to go, could have an Archbishoprick."

So rich, indeed, was the fishery, that it speedily attracted fishermen from many countries besides England. The Portuguese first began to frequent it in the year 1501, and the French apparently in 1504. In 1550, a single Portuguese town, Aviero, had 150 vessels engaged in the industry, while large numbers also sailed from Oporto and other places on the coast. The English boats, coming from Poole and Bideford, were not so numerous, but were larger and better equipped, a fact which gradually secured to the English the right of appointing the "admiral," whose duty it was to maintain order among the rival fishermen.

In the reign of Henry VIII. the fishery was evidently regarded by the authorities as a possession to be carefully nursed, partly, no doubt, on account of its pecuniary value, but also, we may suspect, as affording a training in seamanship to the men who, in case of need, would be called upon for service in the royal navy. But the fishermen appear to have adopted reprehensible methods of obtaining fish, while at the same time escaping the dangers of the northern seas. It, therefore, became necessary to pass a statute for the purpose of providing that "whereas many and dyvers of the said fishermen for their singular lucre doe leve the saide crafte of fisshing and be confederate w Pycardes, Flemynghes,

Norman and Frenchmen, and sometyme sayle over into the costes of Pycardie and Flaunders and sometyme doe meete the said Pycardes and Flemynges half the see over," a penalty of £10 should be imposed on subjects buying fish in Flaunders or at sea, but "anything therin conteyned shall not extende to any person which shall bye eny fisshe in any partes of Iseland, Scotlands, Orkeney, Shotlande, Irelande, or Newland (Newfoundland)."

According to one authority, it was the wealth of the fishery which gave the impetus to the colonization of America. When the Puritans petitioned King James for his consent to their foundation of a settlement on that continent, the monarch, it is said, shrewdly asked, "What profit might arise?" To which the petitioners with commendable brevity replied, "Fishing." "So God have my soul," was the King's answer, "'tis an honest trade; 'twas the Apostle's own calling;" and he gave the required permission. There is a passage in Lescarbot's Nova Francia published in 1609, and cited by Mr. Prowse in his History of Newfoundland, to the effect that a certain Captain Savalet of the French seaport, St. Jean de Luz, was greatly pleased with his fishing. He had, he told Lescarbot, taken fifty crowns' worth of fish every day, and his voyage would be worth £1000. He paid wages to sixteen men, while his vessel was of eighty tons, and would carry 100,000 dried fish.

Sir Walter Raleigh averred that the Newfoundland fishery was in his day the mainstay and support of the western counties in England; and just previous to the outbreak of the American Revolution the threat of Parliament to prohibit the New England Colonists from fishing on the Banks caused the greatest consternation in America. It is not difficult to understand the indignation which such a prohibition would call forth when we learn that, a little earlier in the century, the charge of equipping a vessel of a hundred tons with eight boats was about £400, and that a ship thus equipped "in a

summer doe usually kill 25,000 fish for every boat. Sometimes they have taken above 35,000 for a boat, so that they load not onely their owne ship, but other spare ships which come hither onely to buy the overplus." Such a cargo, if taken in the right season and to the right market, would sell for £2250, which obviously gave a very handsome profit upon the capital invested. "At New Plimoth, in Aprill," the same writer continues, "there is fish much like a herring that comes up into small brookes to spawne. After those, the cod also presseth in such plenty, even unto the very harbours, that they have caught some in their arms, and hooke them so fast that three men oft loadeth a boat of two tuns in two houres." *

So valuable a property was naturally to be reckoned upon to give rise to international disputes, when such neighbours as England and France both desired to possess it. The English Crown had always claimed sovereignty in Newfoundland, and had in fact sent an expedition early in the seventeenth century to take formal possession in the King's name. But the French, who, holding the mainland opposite, had in Quebec and other Canadian towns a market particularly well-situated for the disposal of their fish, appear to have disputed the claim. The question of sovereignty, however, was set at rest by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1763, the thirteenth article providing that, "The island called Newfoundland with the adjacent islands shall from this time forward belong of right wholly to Great Britain. . . . Moreover, it shall not be lawful for the subjects of France to fortify any place in the said island of Newfoundland, or to erect any buildings there, besides stages made of boards, and huts necessary and usual for drying of fish; or to resort to the said island beyond the time necessary and usual for drying of fish. But it shall be allowed to the subjects of France to catch fish, and to dry them on land, in that part *The American Revolution. By Sir G. O. Trevelyan, vol. i. p. 287.

only, and in no other besides that, of the said island of Newfoundland, which stretches from the place called Cape Bonavista to the northern point of the said island, and from thence, running down by the western side, reaches as far as the place called Cape Riche."

There is evidence to show that the British Government of the day were alive to the difficulties to which this arrangement might possibly give birth. A letter dated December 11, 1712, from Queen Anne to the Duke of Shrewsbury, who was acting as plenipotentiary to conclude the treaty, instructs him to make an offer to Louis the Fourteenth of "the entire possession and propriety" of Cape Breton on the express understanding that his Majesty should on his part relinquish "all manner of right to fishing and drying fish on the coast of Newfoundland or any part thereof." "This you will set forth to the Court of France as the most likely method to keep a firm friendship and good understanding between us, and hinder the interests of the two nations from interfering with each other, since either the possessing of Cape Breton in common, or the reserving a joint right of fishing on the coast of Newfoundland which is yielded to us, may occasion frequent and dangerous disputes." The Queen's arguments, however, seem not to have borne fruit, for the treaty was concluded in the form which has already been given.

If matters had remained as they were at the date of the Treaty of Utrecht, it is improbable that the present difficulty would have arisen; but, unfortunately, owing partly to the efforts of later negotiators, and partly to a change of circumstances, the question at issue between Great Britain and France has developed into a problem which it has so far been beyond the powers of diplomacy to solve. By the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the liberty of taking and drying fish was confirmed to the French, and their right was again acknowledged by the Treaty of Versailles in 1783, the limits of the French

shore, however, being altered from Cape Bonavista northwards to Cape St. John on the east coast, and thence southwards from Point Riche to Cape Ray on the west. The latter treaty also ceded to France the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, which lie off the south coast of Newfoundland, “in full right," to serve as a shelter for the French fishermen engaged in the fishery on the Great Banks. These Banks, not being within territorial waters, were and are open to the fishermen of all nations, although in fact the only foreigners who at present fish there are the French; and any cause of complaint arising from the uses to which the islands are at present put by their occupants is quite distinct from the subject with which we are at present dealing, the latter being generally known as the "French Shore" question.

Attached to the Treaty of Versailles, were declarations by the English and French sovereigns which, no doubt, were intended to obviate future disputes between the two countries, but which have, unfortunately, had precisely the opposite effect. The English declaration was as follows:

'The King, having entirely agreed with His Most Christian Majesty upon the articles of the definitive treaty, will seek every means which shall not only insure the execution thereof, with his accustomed good faith and punctuality, but will besides give, on his part, all possible efficacy to the principles which shall prevent even the least foundation of dispute for the future.

"To this end, and in order that the fishermen of the two nations may not give cause for daily quarrels, His Britannic Majesty will take the most positive measures for preventing his subjects from interrupting in any manner, by their competition, the fishery of the French during the temporary exercise of it which is granted to them upon the coasts of the island of Newfoundland; and he will, for this purpose, cause the fixed settlements which shall be formed there to be removed. His Britannic Majesty will give orders that the