The economy upon which the population and the prospects for its growth depended exhibits some of the same features: long term growth susceptible to downturns and setbacks which emphasized vulnerability and impermanence. As in the past, the fishery, apart from vagaries in the migration patterns of the cod stocks, waxed and waned depending on the crucial variable of external markets over which the Island had no control. War, in general, was good for trade. Fortunately for the local population, the 18th century offered plenty of wars - the Austrian Succession (1740-48), Seven Years (1756-63), American Revolution (1776-83), and Revolutionary and Napoleonic (1792-1815) - although the recurring phenomenon of post-war recession, especially in the 1780's, could be devastating. By mid-century, after a generation of war, the fishery employed 20,000 men and was worth £600,000 per annum. A record 476,000 quintals [100 lb. barrels] of cod was exported.²⁴

Outside View of St. John's Harbour From the Naval Chronicle for 1811 by Nicholas Pocock. Pocock joined the Royal Navy in 1761. He did several paintings of St. John's harbour. Courtesy of the National Archives of Canada (NAC: 24563). (37 kb).

If war-generated prosperity brought a slow, albeit tentative, growth in population, it was not significant enough for most of the century to force a reassessment of the statute of 1699. But there were some signs that the gap between principle and practice was becoming apparent to observers. When the Board of Trade recommended the establishment of Oyer and Terminer in 1738, it argued that to do so via prerogative writ would not infringe the statute. How the Board intended to finesse the powers granted exclusively to fishing admirals to try cases at first instance and the provision that capital crimes be tried in England is unclear.²⁵ Nor were the initiatives which led to the putting in place of a Customs House and a Court of Vice-Admiralty deemed inconsistent with the principle of a migratory seasonal fishery. On their face they were at odds with the statutory reiteration of the 1699 principles signalled by Palliser's Act (15 Geo III c. 31) in 1775. In all likelihood not much thought was given to the matter. Britain's claim to a closed mercantilist empire was under sedge in the last half of the 18th century. Increasingly imperial policy centred on the need to contain claims to legislative and fiscal autonomy by the Thirteen Colonies. The Act of 1775 may have reflected a wider need to rationalize and make uniform imperial policy, to batten down the hatches to meet the American squall. It also bears the personal stamp of Sir Hugh Palliser, characterized by Prowse as "according to his lights, an excellent Governor - in labour incessant, the very spirit of unrest, remarkably clear-headed, but very dictatorial".²⁶