222 Dr. Mac Culloch on the Herring. 



It is the duty of the Board of Fisheries to add this to their other 

 exertions ; and if that has not yet been done, it is perhaps because 

 it has been thought sufficiently known, or, possibly, because it is 

 supposed unattainable. It cannot be supposed unimportant ; and 

 that it is neither of all these three, I hope I have proved. At least 

 I have justified the criticism with which I commenced on the 

 theory of Anderson and Pennant. It will not be uninteresting 

 to add a few words on the present commercial and political state 

 of the Herring Fishery. 



That fishery, so long a subject of anxiety and speculation and 

 regulation, has now arrived at a state more extended than was so 

 long wished for, and so long despaired of. It has occasionally ex- 

 ceeded the demand ; and in 1820, it considerably and injuriously 

 overstocked the entire market. It must be known, at least to those 

 who have attended to the history of our commerce, that our anxi- 

 ety about this branch of trade was excited by our jealousy of our 

 neighbours the Dutch, who were represented as raising gold from 

 the mines of the ocean, and as infringing on our rights and pro- 

 perty ; insulting our indolence at the same time by their superior 

 industry. I may refer to the pamphlets and newspapers, almost to 

 the romances and poetry of the day, for the public opinion on this 

 subject. 



That this subject gave rise to as much nonsense as ever was 

 written, need scarcely be told ; while the greater the difficulty 

 which we imagined we found in coping with them in this field, the 

 greater was our anger. These politicians forgot that Holland was 

 overflowing with capital and industry, and was driven to this oc- 

 cupation for want of other employment for its people, as of vent for 

 its capital. They forgot also that the industry and capital of 

 Great Britain were much more profitably, as well as more agree- 

 ably, occupied ; and that neither force, nor bad writing, nor boun- 

 ties, nor acts of parliament, would succeed in diverting either from 

 a profitable trade to a bad one, or from occupations of little labour 

 to one extremely laborious and disagreeable. Yet thus were 

 passed the chief Acts of Parliament in Charles the Second's 

 time, particularly after 1672 j when it is palpable that they were 



