180 NEWFOUN DLAND.

0f the season to be, in case of need, equally divided among his other creditors, many an honest man would be saved from ruin.

Another evil, of serious consequence to the mer- chants themselves, arises out of this law. When the planter or fisherman finds, after the middle of the season is passed, that he will not be able to pay for all the supplies he has received, his energy becomes checked, from the conviction that extra-industry will be of no benefit to him, so long as he cannot pay the whole.

It is certain that none of the British plantations have been worse governed than Newfoundland, nor in any has more confusion prevailed. By the consti- tutions granted to all the other colonies, a clearly defined system of jurisdiction was laid down; but the administration of Newfoundland was, in a great measure, an exclusively mercantile or trading govern- ment; which, as Adam Smith very justly observes, “is perhaps the very worst of all governments for any country whatever ;” and a powerless planter, or fisherman, never expected, or seldom received, justice from the adventurers, or'the fishing admirals, who were their servants. Mr Reeves, in his History of Newfoundland, states, “ that they had been in the habit of seeing that species of wickedness and anarchy ever since Newfoundland was frequented, from father to son; it was favourable to their old impressions, that Newfoundland was theirs, and that all the planta- tions were to be spoiled and devoured at their plea- sure.”