CHAP. XXXV. BOUNTIES OF THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT. 227 



doubling (jr trebling the ordinary catch are greatly aug- 

 mented. 



The bounties paid by France during the nine years 

 from 1841 to 1850 inclusive, for the cod fishery alone, 

 amounted to the annual average of 3,900,000 francs. 

 The number of men employed annually in their fishery 

 was 11,500 ; the bounties, therefore, would be at the rate 

 of 338 francs per annum for each man. France thus 

 trains up hardy and able seamen for her navy. 



This notice, already perhaps too much prolonged, of 

 the importance of the cod fisheries of Newfoundland and 

 the Great Banks may be appropriately brought to a close 

 by a quotation from a French official's document of great 

 interest and weight : — 



Nevertheless, the loss of her most magnificent colonies has 

 occasioned irreparable injury to the commercial marine, whicli 

 is an essential element of naval power. Treaties, which become 

 inevitable in the course of time, have successively robbed her of 

 the most valuable objects of freight. Cotton belongs to the 

 Americans, coal to the English ; and at the present moment, the 

 shipment of sugars, our last resource for distant navigation, 

 seems to be daily growing- less and less. 



The Great Fisheries still remain to us ; and in order to 

 preserve them we must continue the encouragement they have 

 received, even at periods when a commercial and colonial pro- 

 sperity, infinitely superior to that now existing, multiplied our 

 shipping, and created abundance of seamen. In fact, the 

 fisheries give employment to a great number of men, whom a 

 laborious navigation, under climates of extreme rigour, speedily 

 forms to the profession of the sea. No other school can com- 

 pare with this in preparing them so well, and in numbers so 

 important, for the service of the navy.* 



* Report rendered in the name of tlie Commission for tlie Enquiry into the 

 Law relating to the Great Sea Fisheries, by M. Ancet, 1851. M. Coste, of 



Q 2 



