The crisis of 1895 has been dealt with at some little length, because it would be impossible otherwise to understand the occasion of the great Reid Contract, which will form the subject of the next chapter. It so happens that the last ten years of the nineteenth century have been more momentous than any equal period in the history of the colony. * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [41] The census of this year showed that the population had increased to 146,536. [42] _Op. cit._, p. 495. [43] This question of union was frequently raised--notably in 1906, and during the Great War in 1916 and 1917 (see end of chap. ix.). [44] Sir Robert Bond, the ex-Premier of Newfoundland; Mr J.G. Blaine, the American Secretary of State. [45] House of Commons Papers, Miscellaneous, No. 3, 1910, Cd. 5396. [46] See chap. ix. [47] December 14th, 1894. [48] See General Dashwood's letter to _The Times_, December 18th, 1894. [49] Rogers, p. 189. [50] January 17th, 1895. CHAPTER IX THE REID CONTRACT--GENERAL PROGRESS AND RECENT HISTORY The next few years may be dismissed briefly, for they were years of unrelieved melancholy, from the point of view of the public financial policy and the political development of the colony. Nor did the disease admit of a readily applicable remedy. The experience of each decade had shown more and more clearly that the colony had nothing in reserve--no variety of pursuits to support the general balance of prosperity by alternations of success. Potentially its resources were almost incalculably great, but their development was impossible without capital or credit. The colony had neither. Under these circumstances took place the General Election of October, 1897. The assets of the colony were not before the electorate, and there was no reason to suppose that financial proposals of an extraordinary kind were in contemplation. The result of the election placed Sir James Winter in power. In six months the famous "Reid Contract" had been entered into--a contract which must be described at some length in these pages, partly because it throws a vivid light upon the constitutional relations between the Mother Country and a self-governing colony, partly because it appears to be incomparably the most important event in the recent history of Newfoundland.