38 
fish should) run some risk of being destroyed. 
The work goes on swimmingly. In the first six years 
of its history, as proudly set forth by Mr. Dawson in his 
report, 390 of these poor fellows were prosecuted, and 
made ‘to pay in fines and costs £517 5s. Since then I 
‘cannot discover the amount extorted from them, but in 
1897 no less than sixty-two were hauled before the magis- 
trates, while in 1898 the number was eighty-six. It 
sickens one, and makes one despair for humanity when we 
reflect that these are not drunkards, thieves, or rioters, 
but the most independent, courageous, law-abiding work- 
ing class we have, and they are so treated because they 
do not recognise the right of faddists to take their wives’ 
and children’s bread from them, when not one single fact 
Is in evidence to prove that the enormous sacrifices they 
have been made to suffer have done a single pennyworth 
of good. ‘ Deplorable ” it is certainly, but the deplorable 
part is not the part named by Professor Herdman. 
To deal now with the cockle and mussel industry, for 
it is hardly a fishery in the ordinary sense. At present 
the cocklers around Morecambe Bay are petitioning the 
Board of Trade for some relaxation of the oppressive Bye- 
Laws, on the ground that they cannot make a living, and 
they made a most reasonable proposal that the Com- 
mittee should send a deputation to see the work, and 
judge for themselves, but as reported in the Manchester 
