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, which was composed of nominees of the crown, selected exclusively from the merchant class, could throw out all their measures, and were irresponsible to the people. In England King George IV. had rendered only one service to the people,--he had brought royalty into contempt, and so strengthened the feeling which resulted in the passage of many necessary measures which his father and brothers had opposed. But the selfish interests of the merchants and land-owners of England were still in the way of many reforms. Benjamin Disraeli, who did his worst to prevent the starving people from having cheap bread, became the flunkey and afterward the master of the Tory squires; and it was not until thousands had died of famine in Ireland that the selfish land-owners agreed to that reduction of duty on grain which made free trade so popular in England. Now, by a wise colonization policy, the government might have helped both Ireland and Newfoundland.