APPOINTMENT OF A GOVERNOR . 163 The Guipuscoans were also, in an ambiguous man¬ ner, acknowledged to have a claim, as a matter of right, to a participation in the fishery; which the Board of Trade declared afterwards, in 1718, to be inadmissible. Government about this time, as well as the mer¬ chants, began to direct their attention to the trade of the island, with more spirit tban they had hitherto shown. A Captain Taverner was commissioned to survey its coasts ; a lieutenant-governor was appointed to command the fort at Placentia, and a ship of war kept cruising round the island, to keep the French at their limits. In 1729, it was concluded, principally through the representation of Lord Vere Beauclerk , the com¬ mander on the station, to establish some permanent government, which ended, as Mr Reeves observes, in the appointment, " not of a person skilled in the law," as had been proposed, but of a Captain Henry Osborne , commander of his majesty's ship the Squir¬ rel. Lord Vere Beauclerk , who set sail for ¬ foundland with the governor, in the summer of this year, received a box, containing eleven sets of Shaw's Practical Justice of the Peace, being one for each of the following places, which were respectively impress¬ ed on the covers in gold letters : " Placentia, John's, Carbonier , Bay of Bulls, Ferryland, Trepasse, Bay de Verd, , Bonavista , and Old Parlekin, in Newfoundland ;" together with thirteen copies of the statute of King William, and the acts relating to the navigation and trade of the kingdoms.