unfortunately, that the island was an asset to be exploited
commercially in the interests of the home country.

In 1783 the Treaty of Versailles revised the French rights conferred
by the Treaty of Utrecht. The French boundary was contracted from Cape
Bonavista to Cape St. John on the east coast, and was extended from
Point Riche to Cape Ray on the west. The whole subject of the French
claims will be examined in a separate chapter,[34] but a very
important undertaking set forth in the Treaty of Versailles must not
be omitted:

"His Britannic Majesty ... that the fishermen of the two nations may
not give cause for daily quarrels, was pleased to engage that he would
take the most positive measures for preventing his subjects from
interrupting in any measure by their competition, the fishing of the
French during the temporary exercise thereof which is granted to them
upon the coasts of the island of Newfoundland, and that he would for
that purpose cause the permanent settlements which should be formed
there to be removed, and that he would give orders that the French
fishermen should not be incommoded in the cutting of wood, necessary
for the repair of their scaffolds, huts, and fishing boats."

In the time of Governor Milbanke, in 1791, an Act of Parliament
tardily created "the Court of Civil Jurisdiction of our Lord the King
at St. John's in the island of Newfoundland," which Court was
empowered to try all civil cases except those relating to land, and
which usually began actions by the peremptory procedure of arresting
the defendant and attaching his goods. The following year a supreme
Court of Civil and Criminal Judicature was instituted which superseded
the Court erected the previous year, put an end to the authority of