But here Mr. Spearman counts without his host. He should recollect that the British government has, since the death of Charles II., paid an annual pension to the Dukes of Richmond simply because they were descended from the Frenchwoman, Louise de la Querouaille, whose influence induced Charles II. to betray English interests to France, and that but the other day the Salisbury government recognized that precedent by paying the Duke of Richmond a very large sum of money to buy off this infamous claim. So long as the names of the Dukes of Richmond and Saint Alban's (both descendant of Charles II.'s mistresses) remain on the roll of the British Peerage, the Frenchman will have a right to laugh at Mr. Spearman's claim; for we cannot ignore a precedent in our intercourse with foreigners, so long as we act upon it in our domestic affairs. Scarcely was Charles the Libertine seated on the throne of England, when the Frenchmen, in 1660, settled on the southern shore of Newfoundland, at a place which they called La Plaisance (now known as Placentia). They were certainly either wiser or more fortunate in their choice of a location than the English; for, while St. John's and Ferryland, on the straight shore of Avalon, are exposed to the wildest gales of the Atlantic, and shut out by the arctic ice from all communication with the ocean for a part of the winter, Placentia is a protected harbor, open all the year round, and having a sheltered waterway navigable for the largest ships to the northernmost and narrowest part of the Isthmus of Avalon. We must believe that the French would have managed Newfoundland better than the English if they had kept the island; for the men who cut the Isthmus of Suez would surely long ago have made a passage, three miles long, by which the ships of Trinity Bay might have found their way at the close of autumn to the safe winter harbors of the southern coast. All along the southern shore the names on the map tell us of French occupation. Port aux Basques, Harbor Breton, Rencontre Bay (called by the English Round Counter), Cape La Hune, Bay d'Espoir, are but a few of them.