the fruits of victory on behalf of the colony which the struggle had
convulsed, and the direct consequence of this neglect may be seen in
the French fishery claims, which long distracted the occasional
leisure of the Colonial Office. Newfoundland has indeed been hardened
by centuries of trial. For years its growth was arrested by the
interested jealousy of English merchants; and its maturity was vexed
by French exactions, against which Canada or Australia would long ago
have procured redress. Newfoundland has been the patient Griselda of
the Empire, and the story of her triumph over moral and material
difficulties--over famine, sword, fire, and internal dissension--fills
a striking chapter in the history of British expansion.

That keen zest for geographical discovery, which was one of the most
brilliant products of the Renaissance, was slow in making its
appearance in England. Nor are the explanations far to seek. The bull
(1494) of a notorious Pope (Alexander VI.)--lavish, as befits one who
bestows a thing which he cannot enjoy himself, and of which he has no
right to dispose--had allocated the shadowy world over the sea to
Spain and Portugal, upon a fine bold principle of division; and
immediately afterwards these two Powers readjusted their boundaries in
the unknown world by the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), which could
not, however, be considered as binding third parties. The line of
longitude herein adopted was commonly held to have assigned
Newfoundland to Portugal, but the view was incorrect. England was
still a Catholic country, and for all its independence of the Pope in
matters temporal, the effects of such a bull must have been very
considerable. Nor did the personal character of Henry VII. incline him
to the path of adventure; and on the few occasions when he was goaded
to enterprise, almost in spite of himself, we are able to admire the
prudence of a prince who was careful to insert two clauses in his