313 



and would deal with us in the most neighborly and liberal manner. 

 They are willing to admit that there are fish enough both for themselves 

 and for us. We are to spare our censures of colonial fishermen, then, 

 and to speak harshly of the political men alone who, for purposes of 

 their own, have conceived plans which, if executed, will do vast injury 

 to us, and ultimately to the colonists themselves; for it is not to be 

 overlooked that retaliatory legislation on the part of Congress would 

 utterly ruin the colonial fisheries. 



POSTSCRIPT. 



Until the last page of this report was put in type I indulged the de- 

 sign to compile and insert a table, to show the condition of the sea 

 fisheries of the United States during the ten years ending in 1850. 

 The materials which 1 had obtained from the private sources open to 

 me, as digested to satisfy my own mind, proved the decline in some 

 branches to have been so great, (the increase of the population, and 

 consequently of the consumers of fish, considered,) that I almost 

 doubted the accuracy of the results at which I arrived. The only 

 course, under these circumstances, was to defer the execution of my 

 plan until I could have access to official documents at the seat of gov- 

 ernment. 



On application to J. C. G. Kennedy, esq.. Superintendent of the 

 Census Office, I am kindly furnished with the accompanying statistics 

 relative to the cod and mackerel fisheries, which show that these branches 

 of industry were, in 1850, in a more dechning state than I had appre- 

 hended. In Maine, in New Hampshire, and Connecticut, there has been 

 less change than in Massachusetts. With regard to the latter State, I 

 incline to believe that in the amount of capital invested, and in the 

 number of men employed, as well as in the value of the catch, the de- 

 crease (to consider the two fisheries together) was one quarter less in 

 1850 than ten years previously. 



Such is certainly the fact, if the statistical matter furnished me by 

 Mr. Kennedy be accurate. This matter is official. To assume that 

 the returns to the Census Bureau are inaccurate, or that, if essentially 

 correct when completed by the respective local officers, important 

 mistakes have been made at Washington in preparing the " abstracts," 

 is to cast suspicion upon the accuracy of the entire statistics to be con- 

 tained in the census report ; since no reason can be given for errors in 

 the figures that relate to the fisheries, which will not apply with equal 

 force to evei-y other branch of our industry. But to admit, for the mo- 

 ment, that errors do actually exist, it will not be pretended, I suppose, 

 that the fimctionaries of the government, anywhere, have been so very 

 remiss as to destroy all confidence in the results which, in due time, 

 are to be presented to the country. Without the aid of Mr. Kennedy's 

 statements, I was prepared, as before remarked, to find, by a careful 

 comparison of the two periods, that there had been a sensible decrease 

 in the fisheries mentioned, at least in Massachusetts. 



Still, to abandon absolutely the official statistics, and those which I 



