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distributing fish to the poor. One other remark he ^vould 

 make, which was almost forced upon him by a remark 

 which fell from Mr. Bloomfield, and was also suggested 

 by a portion of the speech of Mr, Walpole. He inveighed 

 against the vice, as he might almost call it, of patronage, 

 and he could not but think that his denunciation was 

 somewhat sweeping. If in denouncing patronage he 

 denounced merely careless charity, giving sums of money 

 without exactly knowing the reasons or the objects for 

 which they were given, or without tracing and following 

 out the results which flowed from it, he was at one with 

 him ; but if, as he gathered from his remarks, he was 

 opposed to patronage in the shape of help, he could not 

 agree with him. If patronage meant the holding out of 

 the helping hand to men whom fortune and circumstances 

 had deprived of that helping hand, and who had nowhere 

 to look for it, then patronage was' not only heavenly mercy, 

 but also an economical good. He should like to explain 

 exactly what the Baroness Burdett-Coutts had done with 

 regard to Irish fisheries. She found a district about 

 Cape Clear peopled by brave and hardy men risking their 

 lives, day by day and night by night, in miserably small 

 open boats, and they were struggling to compete with 

 those men in whose interests Mr. Walpole had spoken, 

 those experienced and tutored fishermen from the Isle 

 of Man and Cornwall and other English coasts. When 

 she heard of this she did not believe in the common 

 notion of their want of business capacity, energy, and 

 industry. She trusted them to this extent, that she 

 procured for them boats, something like those used by 

 fishermen of other parts, and she enabled some twelve or 

 fifteen of these men to join together, and to have for each 

 crew a thoroughly seaworthy boat. The boats were not 



