had a navy which supported many a long and arduous contest with that of Great Britain for the dominion of the seas; and its commerce and colonies spread themselves over the most distant parts of the globe. Many fair and populous cities rose with prodigious rapidity from a few mud hovels scattered among the swamps and morasses at the mouths of the Rhine and the Waal. So universally indeed was it acknowledged that the strength, wealth and prosperity of the United Provinces were entirely owing to the herring fishery, that an observation was in common use among themselves, that Amsterdam had its foundation on herring bones. But the best proofs from what channel the republic of the United Provinces derived its rapid flow of wealth and prosperity, may be collected from an estimate of the population of the States General, published in Holland in 1669, which stands as under: 'Persons employed as fishermen, and in equipping fishermen with their ships, boats, tackle, con- 450,000 Persons employed in the navigation of ships in the foreign trade, wholly independent of the trade 250,000 Persons employed as manufacturers, shipwrights, handicraft trades, dealers in the said manufac-650,000 Persons employed in agriculture, inland fishery, daily labour, &c. Inhabitants of all descriptions employed in va 200,000 rious concerns connected with domestic con-650,000 Idle gentry without callings, statesmen, officers, 200,000 Making a total of 2,400,000.' Of this aggregate population it will appear that eleven-twelfths were exercised in habits of industry; and that 700,000, or every third person nearly, was either a mariner, a fisherman, or one employed in the encouragement and increase of their marine and the fisheries. It was the boast of the pensionary De Witt that nearly one-fifth part of the population of the United Provinces earned their subsistence by the fisheries at sea, and it was his opinion that the trade of Holland could not be supported without them, but would decay with the decay of the herring fishery, which he considered as the right arm of the republic. The States General, indeed, made no secret of the grand source of their wealth and prosperity. In one of their ordinances, relating to the herring fishery, they set out by by declaring, how well known it is that the great fishing and catching of herrings is the chiefest trade and principal gold mine of the United Provinces, whereby many thousands of households, families, handicraft trades and occupations are set on work, are well maintained, and prosper, &c.' The people of England were fully aware of the great advantages derived by the Dutch from a fishery carried on principally by the latter within the seas, and frequently close under the shores, of the former. Why this country, with an apparent indifference, suffered a nation which she had so recently raised out of its dykes and mud-banks to a state of independence, to erect, by rapid stages, a grand national superstructure on the basis of British produce and protection, till she became her most formidable rival on the ocean, is a subject that has often engaged the pen of the statesman; of such men as Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir William Monson, Sir William Petty, Sir Roger L'Estrange, and many other able and practical politicians. Neither has there been any want of efforts on the part of individuals, or of encouragement on that of government, (though the latter might not always have been properly directed,) to correct this extraordinary supineness. Liberal subscriptions have been set on foot, and vast sums of money contributed at various times for the establishment of fishing villages and the building and setting forth of ships and boats suitable for the purpose. Various acts of parliament have been passed from time to time for the encouragement of the fisheries and fishermen, conferring premiums, granting bounties, allowing exemptions from duties, and bestowing other indulgencies and privileges, protecting mariners, landsmen, and apprentices engaged in the fisheries from the impress, and allowing every person, who should have followed the occupation of fisherman for seven successive years, being a married man, to set up and freely exercise any trade or profession in any town or place in Great Britain. In the midst of all these encouragements, however, we have not been quite consistent. The cod and turbot fisheries were chiefly carried on by the Dutch. There are two baits of which these fish are peculiarly fond, the lamprey and the whilk, neither of which the Dutch possess, but both of which were amply supplied to them Nay, it appears on evidence before a committee of the House of Commons that our own fishing vessels have been frequently kept a fortnight or three weeks in the Thames for want of lampreys, while the Dutch were carrying them away by hundreds of thousands at a time.* But other unfavourable circumstances of greater weight than these caused the fisheries to languish in Report of the Committee for Fisheries, 1786. England, England, in proportion as they flourished on the opposite side of the channel; and thus, as Mr. Schultes says, This country passively contributed to her rivals' aggrandizement; and at the very period, namely 1695, when the Dutch and her neighbours were enjoying all the advantage of affluence, power and dominion, deriving annually from the British Sea fishery the enormous sum of twenty millions of pounds, we began to borrow money for public expenditure, and incur the national debt, which gradually increased in the same proportion as their wealth and prosperity; and (painful to remark) it appeared by a tract published in 1653, wherein the writer refers to the testimony and asseverations of merchants in Amsterdam, that we purchased our own fish at the incredible sum of sixteen hundred thousand pounds annually." It may be proper, before we endeavour to point out the remedy, to trace some of the main causes, which have operated in producing that fatal disease which has so long and so obstinately impeded the progress of Great Britain towards a successful establishment of the fisheries on all or any of the numerous situations, favourable for that purpose, on a line of sea coast, not less than 3000 miles in extent. The occupation of a fisherman may be considered generally as the offspring of poverty; the dangers of the element on which he moves, the fatigues and hardships that he has to encounter, the disease and infirmity prematurely brought on by exposure to cold and wet, the uncertainty of a market for his fish, if successful, and the certainty of starving from a want of success, are the discouraging prospects which he who embarks in the trade has to contemplate; but as necessity is the parent of exertion as well as of invention, we do not find that a want of hands for the fisheries makes any part of the obstacles which have retarded their progress. It is pretty nearly the same with nations as with individuals; that country, which has but one of its sides abutting on the sea, must necessarily be poor before it consents to become a nation of fishermen. Thus the provinces of Holland and Zealand, whose cultivable land yielded not sufficient produce for the subsistence of one-eighth part of their inhabitants, were driven by necessity to seek for the remainder on the water. But England, which had twelve times the quantity of productive land for her population, felt not the same necessity of cultivating the sea to provide subsistence, though surrounded by that element on every side. Food was neither so dear nor so scarce, that men were driven to the necessity of encountering the perils and hardships of a boisterous element to * Schultes's Dissertation, p. 5. increase increase the quantity or reduce the price of the necessaries of life. The small portion of its inexhaustible stores that was drawn from its bosom was rather to supply an article of luxury for home consumption, than a merchantable commodity for the foreign market; and even that demand was scantily and precariously furnished. If the catch, as it is technically called, was too abundant, a great part of it was spoiled for want of a quick and certain market at hand, while the quantity itself lowered the price of those that were disposed of; if too scanty, the produce was not worth the expense of sending to a distant market, unless sold there at an exorbitant price. The uncertainty of the supply and the fluctuation of price were necessarily followed by an uncertainty in the demand; and such a state of the market being precisely suited for the establishment of a monopoly, a monopoly was accordingly established. For this purpose a narrow and confined spot of ground was set apart in the city of London, which absorbed the whole of the fish that came within the radius of its vortex, extending from Billinsgate, as its focal point, seven miles in every direction; and this little spot virtually monopolized all the best fish that were caught on the coast of the United Kingdom. This market is held as an exclusive privilege of the corporation of London by charter, which,' says Sir Thomas Bernard, in the greatest and most populous city in the world, restricts the sale of an essential article of life to a small and inconvenient market; and has exclusively placed the monopoly of fish in the hands of a few interested salesmen.' 'If the abuse (adds Sir T. Bernard) were limited to a mere enhancement of price upon those who value the articles of life in proportion to their dearness and scarcity, the power might be so modified in its exercise, as to be undeserving of public animadversion or interference. But it is now ascertained that, in a period of scarcity, when every effort is making by importation and economy to provide for the public necessities, a kind of blockade has checked the supply of the metropolis; large quantities of fish have been withheld or wantonly destroyed as they approached the market, and nearly two millions of inhabitants in London and its surrounding neighbourhood have been in a great measure deprived of an article of food, which might have lessened the consumption of butchers' meat and wheat-corn, to the relief of the whole kingdom."* The evils of this monopoly are greatly enhanced by the tricks and abuses which are contrived by the fishermen, the salesmen, and the fishmongers, who, in the present state of things, are all more interested in creating a scarcity than in the diffusion of plenty. It is more advantageous to all these parties to sell a turbot at three guineas, and a lobster for its sauce at twelve shillings, than by sending three times the quantity to market, to reduce the prices Account of a Supply of Fish, p. 1 et seq. to Great care is therefore to a sixth part of what they actually are. taken that the market be precisely fed to the profitable point, but never overstocked. To effect this, they have a depôt of well-boats and store-boats ready stocked about Gravesend. In these boats a supply of cod, turbot, and lobsters are kept during the season, from whence the proper quantity is daily measured out for the Billinsgate market. In the height of the season those that get sickly are thrown overboard, but, towards the end, when keeping up the price is no longer an object, thousands of sickly and emaciated cod and lobsters are thrown into the market. Not many months ago a Russian frigate ran down one of these lobster vessels, and set 15,000 of these animals adrift in the Thames. A species of cruelty is resorted to in order to prevent lobsters, so pounded up, from tearing one another in pieces; the great claw is rendered paralytic by driving a wooden peg into the lower joint. All attempts have hitherto failed to break this iniquitous combination. Certain fishmongers, encouraged by several noblemen and gentlemen, agreed to serve out fish at reduced prices, by having it brought from the coasts by land carriage. The Billinsgate salesmen took the alarm, raised a subscription of several thousand pounds, and bribed the servants and housekeepers of the encouragers of land carriage fish to put the very worst fish they could get on their masters' table; from which it soon obtained so bad a charac ter that the new fishmongers were ruined, and the old ones contrived to add to their monopoly all the fish brought to market by land as well as water carriage. It is of so much importance to destroy this combination, that the Committee of the Fish Association, in their first Report, consider it expedient to commence their operations with the metropolis, believing, and with reason, that the increased use of fish in London, Westminster, and their vicinity, would not fail to contribute, by their example, to introduce its general consumption into other cities and places in Great Britain. To attain this object, it appears to the committee to be absolutely necessary that the present impediments to supply and distribution should be re moved. Of these impediments, the four principal ones are the following. First, Billinsgate, being the only market, is neither adequate in size to more than a small portion of the necessary supply, nor convenient in point of access, or local situation, to the immense popu lation which, within the last century, has extended itself to the westward, over Mary-le-bone, Paddington, Lambeth, &c. a circumstance which has necessarily impeded and obstructed the distri bution and sale of fish. Secondly, the doubt and hesitation of fishermen in bringing up to this only market so large a quantity of |