ous life. But a strong and influential
class in England was interested in harassing the settlers, in
depreciating the resources of the island, and in throwing every
obstacle in the way of permanent settlement. This policy came in with
Charles I. and continued down to the very commencement of the
nineteenth century. 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 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. They considered and called them 'their'
fisheries, and their interests required that there should be no
resident population to compete in their monopoly, to share the best
fishing rooms, and to grow up to be dangerous rivals in foreign
markets. The influence of this class upon the government was
incessantly exercised in framing regulations and laws to choke the
growth of the colony.

"The confused annals of this period can only be understood by
remembering the existence of two antagonistic parties, the 'planters'
and inhabitants on the one hand, who, being settled there, needed the
protection of a government and police, with administration of justice;
and the 'adventurers' or merchants on the other, who, originally
carrying on the fishery from England, and visiting the island only for
the season, needed no such protection for themselves, and had various
reasons for preventing its being afforded to the others.

"If the Mother Country had only forgotten the island it would have
prospered; but in 1633 the English merchants succeeded in procuring
from the Star Chamber rules and regulations drawn solely to advance
their own private interests, and these rules were supplemented always
in the same direction, by the same oppressive agency."[28]

At this time the resident population of the island cannot have
exceeded a few hundreds, and every step was adopted which a vicious
political economy could suggest to keep the numbers down. It was made
penal for a settler to dwell within six miles of the shore, for a
planter to cut down wood or plant within six miles from the shore, for