tion depends upon our navy, and when our shipping is a nursery for that navy, every protection and facility should be given to promote it; every restraint or burthen to discourage it should be done away. It is a floating insecure property of individuals, always precarious and liable to loss; it therefore requires the fostering aid of government, when we have near us at home, competitors like the northern nations; and across the Atlantic the Americans, whose enterprising spirit and vigilance is making head in a more formidable manner than we are aware. CHAP. VII. Of the Fishery Laws. WE now come to the consideration of the regulations respecting the fisheries. These have been properly treated as a branch of the navigation system (1), but the great importance of the subject renders it expedient to give them a separate and distinct enquiry. Next to the advancement of agriculture, the improvement of the fisheries is of the greatest national concern ; they constitute the second natural resource for the means of subsistence, and upon their increase greatly depends the ability of extending and comfortably supporting the population of this kingdom (2). It has been well observed, that in every country where the coasts lay favourably for the fisheries, their encouragement has been found to be an object of high importance; it increases the quantity of food, it brings up a hardy race of people, and it is a great source of wealth, by supplying such nations as have not themselves the means of catching fish, and of private emolument to the numerous artisans necessary to the fitting out of the vessels and implements used in them. To Great Britain, an island circumscribed in extent, and therefore limited in point of subsistence and population which depends on the means of subsistence, the encouragement of fisheries is a peculiar object of importance, and ought to be one of particular solicitude; its defence too in time of war depending on its naval power, increases the importance of that source of wealth, and therefore in more views than one the fisheries are fit objects for public bounties (3); and even the celebrated writer on the Wealth of Nations, who in general expresses himself adverse to interference by governments in the trade and commerce of individuals, yet allows that fisheries are an exception; that their encourage, ment is a national benefit, and therefore their extension ought (1) Reeves's Law of Shipping. (3) Oddy on Fisheries. 3 Adol to be an object for bounties and encouragement at the expence of the public (1). It is also observed in Lords Somers' Tracts (2), that in the grand object of providing with food the human race, which the immutable principle of population itself finds it difficult to keep from an overflow, fisheries occupy a no less considerable place than that of second to agriculture. Philanthropy delights to look forward to that improvement in them so much expatiated upon, so ardently pursued, and hitherto so little attained, for the numbers which would be so rapidly added to mankind, if such an inexhaustible means of support was regularly afforded. Not only does this agriculture of the ocean, as Dr. Franklin terms it, increase the quantity of provisions, but from the numerous and hardy race of men required to follow the trade, it becomes the nursery of the best seamen (3). That skill in navigation, cool bravery, and determined steadiness in action, and that unbending endurance of fatigue and privation, so conspicuous in the navy of England, may in many an instance be referred for their origin to a boyhood spent in the difficulties and hardships of the Northern herring fisheries, where, says Mr. Knox (4), the moment a vessel spreads her sails, she launches into a labyrinth of difficulties, dangers, and hair-breadth escapes; she must navigate in every direction and to every point of the compass, at all times, through rapid currents and jarring tides, and frequently amidst storms and tempests. No sooner hath she doubled one cape than another appears, which the men, already fatigued and worn out, must also encounter, and thus are kept in continual motion, terror, and alarm. These outward and homeward voyages, the various cruises from bay to bay, and from one island to another, in search of the herrings, form the hardy experienced seamen so highly valued in the mercantile service and the Royal navy. The example of Holland, whose riches and edifices, it has been observed, may be said to have risen from the British deep, has employed some of the ablest pens in this country to rouse us to a sense of our more advantageous local situation. The circumscribed extent of the two countries in proportion to their respective population, is another point of comparison in which, if Great Britain has (1) 2 Smith, 279. 3 Adolphus, 278. (2) Lord Somers' Tracts, vol. 12. p. 47. (3) Lord vol. 12. p. 47. Somers' Tracts, (4) Knox's History of the Herring Fisheries, vol. 1. p. 241. 3d edition. the advantage, it should the more awaken her solicitude to the yet infant state of her fisheries (1); and it has been remarked by the able author of the Political State of the British Empire, that the former difficulties relative to our fisheries appear by the present political state of Europe to have been dispelled, and that it behoves us to take the proper measures now to avail ourselves of the advantages which combined circumstances have afforded to Great Britain (2). The man who should bring to perfection a more improved system of fishery regulations, would deserve the gratitude of his country. It is proposed to consider the law and regulations respecting fisheries under the following heads, as they respect, First, Secondly, the herring fisheries. Thirdly, Fourthly, the Newfoundland fisheries; fisheries in general. the whale fisheries. Fifthly, the mackarel, oyster, salmon, pilchard, and other fisheries; and Sixthly, the fisheries in harbours, navigable rivers, &c.. Regulations Such has been the favour shewn to this source of subsist- I. Concise ence, that even during war, when an enemy's property of every general view of History and description is generally subject to seizure, it has been usual the Law and to make an exception from capture in favour of small fishing relative to the vessels, from tenderness to a poor and industrious order of people, Fisheries (3). so useful to mankind in general: this, however, as appears from the case of the Young Jacob and Johanna, is in general a matter of forbearance, and not of right (4). The instances of the encouragement of fisheries by the earlier nations, are ably traced by Macpherson in his Annals of Commerce (5). Scotland appears to have been much attached to fisheries at a very early period: leaving aside conjecture as to the means used by Macbeth to improve the fisheries (6), it appears very clear that from 1124 to 1153, the fishery in the Firth of Forth was attended by English, Scottish, and Netherland fishermen; that the English fishermen were so numerous there, in the reign of Edward the first, that on a breach of a then existing truce by some Dutch armed vessels, 1200 of them were killed; and about the eleventh year of the same reign, the sheriffs of Cumberland and Lancaster (1) Lord Somers' Tracts. (2) 3 Adolphus, 279. (3) See Statutes and Law in 1 Chitty on Game Laws, 239 to titles Fish, Oyster, Larceny. were ordered to send people to buy fish on the western coast of Scotland, and to carry them to Chester; and another order was made for provision of 100 barrels of Aberdeen sturgeons, and 5000 salt fish, and also dry fish; which shews that Aberdeen had the art of curing fish long before the time that the art has been generally supposed to have been discovered in Flanders by Van Beuckels, in 1449 (1). So low were the British fisheries once reduced, that Edward the third licensed foreign fishermen, bringing herrings and other fish for the sustenance of the people of this country, to receive money in payment for their fish, and carry it away, without taking it to the exchangers then appointed at the several ports against the exportation of money, provided they gave security against importation of foreign coins, according to stat. 27 Edw. 1. (2). Spanish fishermen (3) were also permitted to come freely and safely to fish in the ports of England and Bretagne, paying the duties and customs. Henry the fourth granted his protection, for a time specified, to all fishermen of France, Flanders, and Bretagne, for their fishing business (4). The advantages to be derived, however, from the fisheries, do not appear to have been formerly duly appreciated; and although in modern times successive attempts have been made to secure them, yet none have as yet succeeded to the extent which our necessities demand, and to which our peculiar situation entitles us. It has been recently observed, that the former difficulties relative to our fisheries appear by the present political state of Europe to be done away; and if we do not take proper measures to promote them at the present opportunity, it is our own fault (5). It has from the first been an enigma, and unfortunately continues difficult of solution, that with all these local advantages, and all the encouragement afforded by parlia mentary bounties, the English fisheries have been hitherto so inferior to those of its rival. Sir Josiah Child (6) in the preface to his Discourse on Trade, published in 1695, ascribed it to the low interest of money in Holland, the disproportion of which to that of England he calculated at 3 per cent.; and Dr. Smith (7), after saying that the encouragement of the bounty on tonnage provided in the buss fishery, if not necessarily discouraging to (1) See post. (2) Macph. Ann. Com. vol. J. pp. 463. 506.; and see 38 Edw. 3. st. 1. c. 2. Ante, 150. (3) 1 Macph. 545. (4) 1 Macph. 616. (5) 3 Adolph. Pol. St. 279. (6) Sir Josiah Child's Discourse on Commerce, Preface. (7) Smith's W. of N. vol. 2. 281. small ed. |