17 



DISCUSSION. 



Mr. Bloomfield said he should have felt some diffi- 

 dence in offering any remarks, but that he was supported 

 on his left by a friend of hi^, a banker of Skibbereen, and 

 there were one or two things he should like to say with 

 regard to this question of transit. From the document 

 issued by the London and North-Western Railway Com- 

 pany, he found that there were two different rates for 

 carriage, one called the ordinary rate, and the other the 

 owner's risk rate ; the ordinary rate from North Wall to 

 London was seven shillings a hundredweight, and the 

 owner's risk rate five shillings and threepence a hundred- 

 weight ; but in the case of a perishable commodity like 

 fish, the latter rate was, of course, quite inapplicable ; but 

 it was not only the question of rates, but of delay which 

 occurred, and his friend, to whom he had just referred, had 

 been obliged to come to London in consequence of the 

 number of complaints he received of the fish arriving late 

 in the market. On one occasion he sent a man by one of 

 the steamers going to Milford, and he found that when the 

 steamer arrived at Milford at 7 P.M., lOO boxes of fish were 

 discharged, but only a portion of them left at eight the 

 same evening, and the remainder at half-past five the next 

 morning ; being left on the quay the fish in the interval 

 were exposed to the rain, which washed all the ice out of 

 the boxes, and very often the boxes were not unloaded for 

 three hours after the arrival of the steamers. Yet the 

 Great Western Railway Company admitted receiving as 

 much as ^^ 20,000 in three months for this traffic during the 

 run of the mackerel-fishing, and surely they ought to pro- 

 vide more reasonable facilities. In consequence of these 



[14] ■ c 



