t more harshly than the
possible rebel.

The Newfoundland settlers, Catholic or Protestant, had proved the most
loyal men in the colony.

When the French, under D'Iberville, captured St. John's, and all
Newfoundland lay at their feet, the solitary exception was the little
Island of Carbonear in Conception Bay, where the persecuted settler
John Pynn and his gallant band still held aloft the British flag. In
1704-5 St. John's was again laid waste by the French, under Subercase;
and, although Colonel Moody successfully defended the fort, the town
was burned, and all the settlements about Conception Bay were raided
by the French and their Indian allies. But Pynn and Davis bravely and
successfully defended their island Gibraltar in Conception Bay.

In 1708 Saint Ovide surprised and captured St. John's, but again old
John Pynn held the fort at Carbonear.

In the American War one of Pynn's descendants, a clerk at Harbor
Grace, raised a company of grenadiers from Conception Bay; and they
fought with such success in Canada that he was knighted as Sir Henry
Pynn, and raised to the rank of general. But the selfish government at
home cared nothing for Newfoundland. The first Congress of the United
States, Sept. 5, 1774, forbade all exports to the British possessions.
This would not have hurt Newfoundland if the settlers had been allowed
to carry on agricultural pursuits there. But these had always been
discouraged by the English; and so they were dependent on the New
England States for their supplies, and were threatened with absolute
famine as soon as the war broke out. Had they been disloyal, they
might have gained their rights from England; but their very loyalty to
such a government was their worst misfortune.

Even in 1783 the Englishman had not learned the evil results of
permitting royal interference in British politics. It is not merely in
the reigns of the libertine kings that we see this. Queen Elizabeth
injured England by interfering with the policy of its wisest
statesmen. The ascendency of Harley and Saint John Bolingbroke, who
deserted England's allies and threw away the fruits of Marlborough's
victories, was due to the influence of a High Church waiting-woman
over Queen Anne; and now, when even Lord North, to say nothing of the
better class of Englishmen, disapproved of George III.'s obstinate
resistance to the just claims of the American colonies, the support
given to the king by the Tories led to the loss of