ver the "Chesapeake"
destroyed the prestige of the American navy; and he is wrong even in
that.

The "Shannon" had a brave and able commander, and had been many weeks
at sea, so that Captain Broke had been able to train his men
thoroughly, and, above all things, to prevent them from getting
drunk.

Captain Lawrence had to engage many men who had never been on a
war-vessel before, and did not know how to work the guns. Many of the
sailors had bottles of rum in their pockets, and were too drunk to
stand when their ship got within fighting distance of the "Shannon."

I wish our present Secretary of the Navy would learn the lesson, and
now, when the need of the Newfoundlanders is so great, and when we
require sober men to man our navy, give the brave fishermen of that
island every reasonable inducement to enlist in our service.

The war closed unsatisfactorily, by the mediation of the Emperor
Alexander of Russia; and the Treaty of Ghent left England mistress of
the seas.

The treaties of 1814 and 1815 gave England another opportunity for
relieving Newfoundland from the French control of her shore; but the
Tories were at the helm, and became fellow-conspirators with other
tyrants of Europe in perpetrating the most monstrous wrong and the
completest restoration of despotism that was conceivable, in Germany,
Austria, Italy, Spain, everywhere.

They insulted France by imposing upon her the rule of a Bourbon, and
to this Bourbon they guaranteed those rights over Newfoundland on
which the French republic bases its claims to-day.

Let us now turn to Newfoundland itself. While the nations were
fighting, its merchants had enjoyed the monopoly of the cod-fisheries.
Some of the capitalists had secured profits between L20,000 and
L40,000 a year each, but they made the poor fishermen pay eight pounds
a barrel for flour and twelve pounds a barrel for pork. They took
their fortunes to England. No effort was made to open up roads or
extend agriculture; for, if it had been done, the landlords of England
would not have been able to sell their pork and wheat at such
exorbitant prices there.

So, when the war ceased and other nations were enabled to compete in
the fisheries, the colony had to pass through some years of disaster
and suffering, while the merchants were spending their exorbitant
profits in England.

The planters and fishermen had been in the habit of leaving their
savings in the hands of the St. John's merchants. Man