Although these arrangements could be rationalized as temporary expedients, they seemed to recognize and respond to the fact of settlement. The population was growing, from 3,000 in 1728 to double that by mid-century, and to 16,000 by 1764. How was it, then, that even after 1800 when the population surpassed 20,000 the governors could canvass the prospects for mass resettlement and deportation?²¹ Two hypotheses suggest themselves. They lead one to inquire into the nature of the population which was increasing and the sort of economic growth which sustained it.

St. John's Harbour Untitled. A view of the entrance of St. John's from inland. Anonymous and undated, it is likely from the late 18th century. The left foreground shows a multitude of fish flakes on upright poles. Courtesy of The Rooms Provincial Museum Division, St. John's, NL. (37 kb).

To this point we know little about these 18th century immigrants to Newfoundland. The climate and prospects for employment in sectors outside the fishery were no more favourable than in the past. So long as the fishery remained a migratory one, as it did past mid-century, the incidence of immigration by merchants or professionals was likely to be modest. One might suggest that a significant proportion of the small population was made up of young single men who stayed on in Newfoundland at the end of the fishing season. In all likelihood their home communities in the West Country or in southern Ireland, where the ships stopped each season to fill their complement of seamen and fishermen, offered little incentive to return. (The Irish by 1750 were said to outnumber the English in St. John's.) Some may have preferred the risks and possibilities for adventure and a better future in a new land to the bleak prospects and rural and urban poverty of life at home. Evidently a blind eye was turned toward the 1699 prohibition against carrying passengers to Newfoundland. The ships regularly carried a complement of dieters - men who signed on for a single voyage in return for room and board. With their return passage money, or a portion of it, in hand, they might eke out an existence in St. John's looking for work, or bartering a promise to work in the local fishery the following summer in exchange for lodging over the winter months. Dieter is an imprecise term and appears to have been generally applied to male seasonal workers who were neither householders nor perceived as stable, or potentially respectable, members of the community. The first week in May when the ships arrived from England and the cod fishery was getting underway was marked by the cry: "Out dogs, and in dieters!" In all likelihood many of these young men were transients, spending a season or two in Newfoundland. Noted for their drunkenness and violence, they were the despair of the "respectable" classes and considerable relief accompanied their moving on to greener pastures on the mainland.²²

Quidi Vidi Harbour, 1801 A view of Quidi Vidi Harbour drawn by Henry Trapnel in 1801. Courtesy of The Rooms Provincial Museum Division, St. John's, NL. with more information (52 kb).

In the late 18th century the merchants appear to have been no more committed to permanent residence than were the dieters. From St. John's in 1785, 47 West Country firms, together with two from London and one from Greenock, supplied the fishery, usually on consignment, in exchange for first claim on the catch. Only 12, a quarter of them, had been in Newfoundland before 1750, and 11 would be insolvent by the 1790's.²³ Within such firms, it appears that young men, frequently nephews of the principal owners back in Poole or Dartmouth, would come out as agents or junior partners for a few years in hopes of expanding business and making their fortunes. With the caution that the data comes from the 1790's and the early 19th century, it appears that even when one married a local girl it was quite typical to return to England in one's early 40's to run the business from that end, or even to retire in a less rigorous climate and a more civilized culture. Accordingly, many more people may have passed through Newfoundland than gross population figures, themselves unreliable, indicate. If such transients were drawn from all classes the pressure which it was necessary for them to mount in favour of more permanent forms of governance may have been lacking. The imperial response, ad hoc and arguably temporary adjustments via governor's decree, may simply have reflected the impermanence and modest growth of the settled population.