In this report it is stated, that for some late years, the fish had failed in Newfoundland; that the adventurers had lost many of their ships in the late wars, especially in that with _Spain_; and that the late wars had much diminished the hands which used to take fish: that the inhabitants and planters, who, contrary to their old charter, lived within six miles of the sea, had destroyed the woods, and continued to destroy whatever the adventurers left behind them; that they possessed early the places of greatest convenience, and, which was very pernicious, most of them sold wine, and brandy, whereby the seamen were withdrawn from their labor, and many seduced to stay in the place, while their families thereby became burthensome to their respective parishes at home. That the inhabitants lived scattered in five-and-twenty different harbors, almost eighty leagues asunder; and that in all the winter, when abuses were chiefly committed, there was no passing from one place to another, so that near forty harbors would have no government, though the governor were actually in the country. It is also stated, that besides the charge of forts, and a governor, which the fish-trade could not support, it was needless to have any such defence against foreigners, the coast being defended in winter by the ice, and in summer by the resort of the king’s subjects; so that unless there were proper reasons for a _colony_, there could be none for _governor_. That against a colony, there were not only the rigours of the climate, and infertility of the land, which obliged those who were there all the winter, to idleness, and inclined them to debauchery, but this, that they chiefly consumed the produce of _New England_, by the shipping of which country, they were furnished with French wine and brandy, and _Madeira_ wines, in exchange for their fish, without depending, as they should, for supply from England; so that if the climate and soil should favour a colony, the planters would rather adhere to _New England_, and so go on to tread in the same steps as those colonists did, to the loss of the many advantages which, by the present method of things, are yet enjoyed by the mother country; there being no hope for a like regulation on the product of this place as on the products of the other plantations, because fish cannot bear the charge of coming home, but must go _directly_ to the markets abroad. It was reported that the French did not manage their fishery otherwise, than by adventurers’ ships, that went out, and returned back yearly. That they maintained a fort at _Placentia_ to defend them from the Indians, who, at certain times, came off from the main, and molested them in their beaver-trade; for which trade, and not for fishing, the French had a residence there. It was reported, that the adventurers caught fish cheaper than the planters.