y of these
failed, and the hardly won money of the fishermen was swept away by
the insolvency of their bankers. It is estimated that the working
class lost a sum little short of L400,000 sterling.

Now, eighty years later, we have another instance of the same
misfortunes, proceeding from the same cause,--the fact that the money
made by the fishery has been taken off to England; that the banks,
which are altogether in the hands of the mercantile, or English,
party, have been unfaithful to their trust; and that the fishermen who
hold the bankers' notes get, from the one bank, 80 cents, and, from
the other, only 20 cents on the dollar.

The merchants applied for aid to the British government; and in June,
1817, a committee of the House of Commons met. The merchants had only
two remedies to propose. One was the granting of a bounty, to enable
them to compete with the French and the Americans, who were sustained
by bounties; but, although England was a protectionist country at that
time, it gave only bounties in favor of rich men, and not of the poor.
The other was the deportation of the principal part of the
inhabitants, now numbering 70,000, to the neighboring colonies.

The honest, sensible, easy plan, that of opening up the land to
cultivation, so that the starving people might be able to grow their
own food and breed their own cattle, was the one thing that these
so-called practical Englishmen would not permit, because it might
interfere with the profits of the British land-owner and merchant.

At that very time the local authorities of Massachusetts were giving a
bounty for each Newfoundland fisherman brought into the State.

When Sir Thomas Cochrane was made governor in 1825, his government
made the first road in the island. For one hundred and forty-five
years England had been master of the island, and not a single road had
been built suitable for wheeled carriages. Is it conceivable that the
French would so completely have neglected the colony if they had been
its masters?

In 1832, when the Reform Bill put an end to the malign influence of
Tory ascendency in England, Newfoundland also gained the boon of
representative government; but it was only a merchants' government.
The people who elected the House of Assembly did not dare to vote
against the will of the merchants for fear of losing employment; and,
while their representatives had the power of debating, passing
measures, and voting moneys, the Council, w