PART II.

DESPATCHES, REPORTS, CORRESPONDENCE, &C.

No. 1.-1786, August 23: Extract from Instructions to Lord Dorchester as Governor of the Province of Quebec.

30. The extension of the limits of the Province of Quebec necessarily calls forth your attention to a variety of new matter and new objects of consideration: The protection and control of the various settlements of Canadian subjects and the regulation of the peltrytrade in the upper or interior country on the one hand, and the protection of the fisheries in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and on the Labrador coast on the other hand point to regulations that require deliberation and dispatch.

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33. The fisheries on the coast of Labrador and the islands adjacent thereto are objects of the greatest importance, not only on account of the commodities they produce, but also as nurseries of seamen, upon whom the strength & security of our kingdom depend.

34. Justice & equity demand that the real and actual property & possession of the Canadian subjects on that coast should be preserved entire, and that they should not be molested or hindered in the exercise of any sedentary fisheries they may have established there.

35. Their claims however extend to but a small district of the coast, on the greatest part of which district a cod-fishery is stated to be impracticable.

36. On all such parts of the coast where there are no Canadian possessions, and more especially where a valuable cod-fishery may be carried on, it will be your duty to make the interest of our British subjects going out to fish there in ships fitted out from Great Britain the first object of your care, and as far as circumstances will admit to establish on that coast the regulations in favour of British fishing ships, which have been so wisely adopted by the Act of Parliament passed in the reign of King William the Third for the encouragement of the Newfoundland fishery and you are on no account to allow any possession to be taken, or sedentary fisheries to be established upon any parts of the coast that are not already private property by any persons whatever, except only such as shall produce annually a certificate of their having fitted out from some port in Great Britain.

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