Earl of Frederick Edwin Smith Birkenhead

“ In 1817 a Select Committee of the House of Commons was specially appointed to consider the situation of Newfoundland. The merchants, full as ever of vicious political economy, had two remedies to propose for the admitted distresses. One was the concession of bounties to place them on a level with French and American competition; the other was the removal of the population (then numbering 17,000) to Nova Scotia or Canada. Determined to omit nothing which might make them the derision of history, they added an emphatic opinion that agriculture could never thrive on the island. ”

“ Responsible government has its privileges and its obligations, the latter of which flow logically from the former. The Imperial Government charges itself with responsibility for the finances of a Crown colony because it directs the policy and determines the establishment on which the finances so largely depend. It is not reasonable to ask that the British taxpayer should assume responsibility for liabilities incurred by a colony with responsible government. ”

“ It is not surprising to find that in this difficulty the minds of the colonists turned towards the Imperial Exchequer. But the distinction is vital between an Imperial grant in relief of a visitation of nature and a grant in relief of financial disasters which may be the result of improvidence or extravagance. The Imperial Exchequer is drawn from complex sources, and cannot be diverted to irregular purposes without injustice to large numbers of poor people. These facts were not unnaturally overlooked in Newfoundland, for in trouble the sense of proportion is apt to disappear. ”

“ The only remedy against the evils flowing from the present system will be found in giving to the people, what they most ardently wish, a civil Government, consisting of a resident Governor, a Senate House, and House of Assembly. ”

“ He had been the pioneer of the new movement, had suffered in the people's cause, and yet the public, 'that many-headed monster thing—the mob,' were the first to cast aside their leader in the fight for Home Rule, and to give their votes and support to a new and untried man. ”

“ It was laid down that the Crown, by its prerogative, can [112] create a Legislative Assembly in a settled colony, with the government of its inhabitants: but that it is highly doubtful whether the Crown could, if it wished, bestow upon such an Assembly an authority, such as that of committing for contempt, not incidental to it by law. "The House of Assembly of Newfoundland," said Chief Baron Parke, "have not, what they erroneously supposed themselves to possess, the same exclusive privileges which the ancient law of England has annexed to the Houses of Parliament." ”

“ So the great Bacon, at a time when the wealth of the Incas was being revealed to the dazzled eyes of the Old World, declared, with an admirable sense of proportion, that the fishing banks of Newfoundland were richer far than the mines of Mexico and Peru.
Along the coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk the codfish is commonly caught with hook and line, and the same primitive method is still largely used by colonial fishermen. More elaborate contrivances are growing in favour, and will inevitably swell each year's returns. ”

“ Up to date the people of this old, loyal colony have received no response. They have been struggling against difficulties in the past, and if they still have to trust to their own inherent pluck, and to the resources of the country, they must only passively submit, although they may the more bitterly feel the heartless treatment of the Imperial Government towards them. ”

“ Notwithstanding the chill seas in which it lies, Newfoundland is not in fact a cold country. The Arctic current lowers the temperature of the east coast, but the Gulf Stream, whilst producing fogs, moderates the cold. The thermometer seldom or never sinks below zero in winter, and in summer extreme heat is unknown. Nor is its northerly detachment without compensation, for at times the Aurora borealis illumines the sky with a brilliancy unknown further south. A misconception appears to prevail that the island is in summer wrapped in fog, and its shores in winter engirt by ice. ”

“ The right to make regulations as to the exercise of the liberty to take fish, under the Treaty of 1818, is inherent to the sovereignty of Great Britain; (2) The United States has the right to employ non-Americans in the fisheries, but they are not entitled to benefit or immunity from the said Treaty; (3) While American fishing vessels may be required to report at colonial ports when convenient, such vessels should not be subject to the purely commercial formalities of report, entry, and clearance at a Custom House, nor to light, harbour, or other dues not imposed upon Newfoundland fishermen ”

“ The right to complete and unfettered control over financial policy and arrangements is essential to self-government, and has been invariably acknowledged and respected by Her Majesty's Government, and jealously guarded by the colonies. The Colonial Government and Legislature are solely responsible for the management of its finances to the people of the colony, and unless Imperial interests of grave importance were imperilled, the intervention of Her Majesty's Government in such matters would be an unwarrantable intrusion and a breach of the charter of the colony. ”

“ A Court of Civil Jurisdiction was also created for Labrador. We may recall here the observations of Chief Justice Reeves on the fishing-admirals: "They are ever the servants of the merchants. Justice was not to be expected from them; and a poor planter or inhabitant, who was considered little better than a law-breaker in being such, had but a small chance of justice in opposition to any great west-country merchant. They considered that Newfoundland was theirs, and that all the [100] planters were to be spoiled and devoured at their pleasure." ”

“ In the first place, there were men who were saturated in the old illusions and ideas, and intended colonization as a means to an end, the end being the gold and silver and spices of Asia. Secondly, there were fishermen, who went to Newfoundland for its own sake, in order to catch fish for the European market, who were without illusions or ideas or any wish to settle, and who belonged to many nations, and thwarted but also paved the way for more serious colonizers. Thirdly, there were idealists who wished to colonize for colonization's sake and to make England great ”

“ Conversely, land words have sea meanings, and a 'planter,' which meant in the eighteenth century a fishing settler as opposed to a fishing visitor, meant in the nineteenth century—when fishing visitors ceased to come from England—a shipowner or skipper. The very animals catch the infection, and dogs, cows, and bears eat fish. Fish manures the fields. Fish, too, is the main-spring of the history of Newfoundland, and split and dried fish, or what was called in the fifteenth century stock-fish, has always been its staple, and in Newfoundland fish means cod. ”

“ Until the wealth and population of the colony shall have increased considerably beyond their present amount, the introduction of what is called responsible government will by no means prove to its advantage.... The institutions of Newfoundland have been of late in various ways modified and altered, and some time must unavoidably elapse before they can acquire that amount of fixity and adaptation to the colonial wants of society which seems an indispensable preliminary to the future extension of popular government. ”

“ Hence it happened that foreign vessels sailed up the Thames, or anchored by the quays of Bideford in the service of English trade, at a time when the spirit of Prince Henry the Navigator had breathed into the Portuguese service, when Diaz was discovering the Cape, and the tiny vessels of Da Gama were adventuring the immense voyage to Cathay.
It is now clearly established that the earliest adventurers in America were men of Norse stock. ”

“ Improvidence among the poorer classes is familiar to economists in more experienced societies than that of Newfoundland, and may be accepted as a permanent element in the difficulty. The real hope lay in opening up, on remunerative lines, industries which would occupy the poor in the lean months. Nor was Newfoundland without such resources, if the capital necessary for their development could have been found. A penetrating railway system, by its indirect effects upon the mining and agricultural interests, would have done much to solve the problem of the unemployed. ”

“ The principal home of the cod is the Grand Newfoundland Bank, an immense submarine island 600 miles in length and 200 in breadth, which in earlier history probably formed part of North America. Year by year the demand for codfish grows greater, and the supply—unaffected by centuries of exaction—continues to satisfy the demand. This happy result is produced by the marvellous fertility of the cod, for naturalists tell us that the roe of a single female—accounting, perhaps, for half the whole weight of the fish—commonly contains as many as five millions of ova. ”

“ Those who are struck by the conscientious obligation which the then Government could no doubt bequeath, may ask themselves how long a democratically governed country would tolerate corruption or ineptitude in the public service on the ground that the monopolist worker of them had inherited a franchise from an ancestor who had known how to exploit the public necessities. ”

“ Ill-informed or indifferent politicians in the Mother Country neglected to push home the fruits of victory on behalf of the colony which the struggle had convulsed, and the direct consequence of this neglect may be seen in the French fishery claims, which long distracted the occasional leisure of the Colonial Office. Newfoundland has indeed been hardened by centuries of trial. For years its growth was arrested by the interested jealousy of English merchants; and its maturity was vexed by French exactions, against which Canada or Australia would long ago have procured redress. ”

“ The cod fisheries of Newfoundland are much larger than those of any other country in the world; and the average annual export has been equal to that of Canada and Norway put together. The predominance of the fishing industry, and its ubiquitous influence in the colony are vividly emphasised by Mr Rogers [2] in the following passage, though his first sentence involves an exaggerated restriction so far as modern conditions are concerned:
"Newfoundlanders are men of one idea, and that idea is fish. Their lives are devoted to the sea and [14] its produce, and their language mirrors their lives ”

“ Hitherto the population had possessed no voice in the administration of their own affairs. The Governors exercised an absolute power, which to progressive minds appeared to be an indifferent and unnecessary despotism. So far as Newfoundland affairs were concerned they almost invariably adopted an ultra-conservative attitude, and were hostile to proposals for amelioration called for in the changing circumstances of the colony. Thus the demand for self-government became more and more general. ”

“ Still, the evils were very real, and extorted recognition even from the gang of west country monopolists who strangled for so long the growth of the island. We find a recommendation offered by them to the Board of Trade with astounding assurance, that the 3000 odd men, women, and children, who by this time composed the population of Newfoundland, "should be encouraged to settle in Nova Scotia—as they might be of service there, where inhabitants were wanted." ”

“ It rarely happens that the native, as in South Africa, has shown sufficient tenacity and stamina to resist the tide of the white aggression: more often the invaders have gradually thinned their numbers. The Spanish adventurers worked to death the soft inhabitants of the American islands. Many perished by the sword, many in a species of national decline, the wonders of civilization, for good and for bad, working an obsession in their childish imaginations which in time reacted upon the physique of the race. ”

“ As no true citizen of Newfoundland will surrender the belief that Cape Bonavista was in fact the landfall of Cabot, it seems proper to insert in the story of the island, for what they are worth, the nearest contemporary accounts of Cabot's voyage. ”

“ As has been well said: [22] "a halo of real enthusiasm illumines this foolish founder of the greatest colonial empire in the world, and where a hero leads, even though it be to ruin, others are apt to follow with enthusiasm, for tragedies such as these attract by their dignity more than they deter." More particularly, Gilbert's voyage is of great interest, because we may reasonably associate him with the colonial ideas of his greater half-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh. ”

“ Very soon after their establishment the French settlers repudiated England's sovereignty over the south parts of Newfoundland, and from time to time strengthened their colony by bringing over bands of French immigrants. It was clear to many that the extension of French power in Canada and Newfoundland was a serious menace to the English fisheries and settlements: leading statesmen, however, refused to recognize the danger, and believed that if any really existed, the system [82] of convoys would obviate it. ”

“ John's, gave employment to hundreds of storekeepers, coopers, stevedores, and others, beside some thousands of unskilled labourers occupied in the handling of the fish. All these men are now without a day's work, or any means of obtaining it. The isolation of the colony, away out in the Atlantic with no neighbour, is its greatest curse. People unemployed cannot [139] emigrate, but must swell an army of industrials depending on the Government for relief. The city is a veritable aggregation of unemployed; it is a city to let. ”

“ The tenure of some has never been broken; the names and locations of others are perpetuated in the existing fishing hamlets which dot the shore line. Under the 'supplying system' the merchants and planters 'supply' the fisherfolk each spring with all the essentials for their adequate [80] prosecution of the industry, and when the season ends, take over their produce against the advances, made them six months before. The 'merchants' are the descendants of the early 'merchant adventurers' who exploited the new-found Colony. ”

“ Captain Mason, Sir William Vaughan, and Captain Whitbourne had written favourably of the island; but from their day down to 1842, when Sir Richard Bonnycastle wrote his book, every writer described it as barren; in summer gloomy with perpetual fog, and in winter given over to excessive cold and blinding snowstorms. The [76] west country people of England, generation after generation, drew from the fisheries of Newfoundland enormous profits, upon which prosperous mercantile establishments and noble families were built up and sustained in England. ”

“ The rivers, though "famous, faire, and profitable," are not overpoweringly majestic. The largest are the Exploits River, 200 miles long and navigable for some 30 miles, and the Gander, 100 miles long, which—owing to the contour of the island—flows to the eastern bays. The deficiency, however, if it amounts to one, is little felt, for Newfoundland excels other lands in the splendour of its bays, which not uncommonly pierce the land as far as sixty miles. The length of the coast-line has been calculated at about 6000 miles—one of the longest of all countries of the world relatively to the area. ”

“ The politics of the colony would be braced by the ampler atmosphere of the Dominion, and the tendency towards parochialism finally arrested. The geographical difficulty ceased to exist when the United States taught us how vast are the areas over which successful political unions are possible. No one can fairly ask that Newfoundland should [128] take the step in the teeth of her own material interests; but, assuming that union with Canada can be reconciled with those interests, the Imperial issue holds the field. ”