hile the
merchant has the power of setting his own price on the supplies issued
to the fishermen and on the fish that the people catch for him? Thus
we see a set of unfortunate beings worked like slaves, and hazarding
their lives, when at the expiration of their term (_however successful
their exertions_) they find themselves not only without gain, but so
deeply indebted as forces them to emigrate or drive them to despair."
He further relates how the merchants refused to allow a tax of
sixpence per gallon on rum, to help them to defray administrative
expenses; and he describes the merchants as "opposed to every measure
of government which a governor may think proper to propose for the
general benefit of the island."

But even this Governor Waldegrave, though he so clearly saw the true
cause of the evil, sternly refused the only remedy within reach, which
was to grant the poor wretches the right to use the waste,
uncultivated land which existed in so great abundance round about
them.

He was so far from doing this that, when about to leave, he put on
record, in 1799, for the use of his successor, that he had made no
promise of any grant of land, save one to the officer commanding the
troops, and that was not to be held by any other person. That is the
way in which Britain's Tories have cared for her colonies.

Hatton and Harvey say: "In many of the smaller and more remote
settlements successive generations lived and died without education
and religious teaching of any kind. The lives of the people were
rendered hard and miserable for the express purpose of driving them
away. The governors of those days considered that loyalty to England
rendered it imperative on them to depopulate Newfoundland."

How did England stand meanwhile towards the other nation, that of
France, which had claims on Newfoundland? This country had exercised
its right to replace the Bourbons by the republic, just as England had
replaced the Stuarts by the Guelphs.

But the Germans and Austrians had insolently interfered in the private
affairs of France, and so made a military leader, in the person of
Napoleon Bonaparte, absolutely indispensable for the protection of the
country against foreign foes.

No sooner was Napoleon seated on the consular throne--he had not then
become emperor--than he addressed a letter to King George III., urging
the restoration of peace. "The war which has ravaged for eight years
the four quarters of the globe, is i