At this time the resident population of the island cannot have exceeded a few hundreds, and every step was adopted which a vicious political economy could suggest to keep the numbers down. It was made penal for a settler to dwell within six miles of the shore, for a planter to cut down wood or plant within six miles from the shore, for any planter or inhabitant to take up the best positions in the harbours before the arrival of the fishing-fleet in the spring; and every master who sailed with a crew to Newfoundland was under bond--lest here and there a permanent settler should filter through--to return with his exact complement of hands. Their Lordships of the Committee of Trade and Plantations were not superior to the prejudices of the day, and they resolved in 1675, "That all plantations in Newfoundland should be discouraged ... or that the western charter should from time to time be put in execution; by which charter all planters were forbid to inhabit within six miles of the shore from Cape Race to Cape Bonavista." Equally considerate and attentive were the efforts of the home country to cope with crime in the island. The Star Chamber ingeniously provided that persons charged with homicide, or with stealing to the value of 40s., should be brought home and submitted to the judicial experience of the Mayors of Southampton, Weymouth, and other specified towns. The discrimination may also be admired which prohibited stealing _from the fishing nets_. It must be supposed that time hung heavily on the hands of the settlers in the intervals of the fishing, for we find at the period much time and industry wasted on petitions to the Committee of Trade, who possibly treated them as Grenville's predecessors are said to have treated the American despatches. The Board of Trade, which inherited the duties and the incompetence of the Committee, proved more complaisant, and was indeed prepared to tolerate permanent settlers to the number of one thousand. A struggle was imminent, if only they had known it, when the presence of a few thousand resolute settlers in Newfoundland would be of high moment to the interests of England. The life of such as were allowed to remain must have been wild and strange, alternating between the populous alacrity of the fishing season and the hand to mouth struggle of the long winter months. Perhaps the amenities of life were not missed because they can hardly have been known; but the restrictions on building and the absence of local authority must early have given rise to bitterness and discontent. Certainly we must admire the constancy of men who were content to live, a solitary cluster, on the coast, with an unexplored interior and savage inhabitants behind them, and with no more secure prospect of material progress than a process of undetected squatting on the forbidden ground. * * * * *