40 



ment, protection, and improvement' provided they were not 

 repugnant to any existing statute, and were approved of by the 

 Chief Governor of Ireland. They were also empowered to hold 

 general meetings, summon witnesses, and examine upon oath 

 for inquiry into the state of the Fisheries in each district, and 

 the best means to be adopted for the above purposes. To make 

 annual reports to Parliament, as to expenditure and accounts 

 of penalties received, and containing, as far as might be prac- 

 ticable, such statistical accounts, under different heads, of value, 

 returns, &c., as might be useful. 



THE SEA FISHERIES. 



The fish of the sea incapable of increase from human cul- 

 tivation, and supplied by an element boundless as to extent 

 are hardly exhaustible by the means that man can apply to con- 

 vert them to his use, his ' dominion over the fishes of the sea 

 and the fowls of the air ' being but limited in power. That 

 which is obviously designed for the use of all, has by the 

 laws of nature and of man been left as free as the need of 

 interposition, to prevent it from becoming a cause of strife, or 

 to restrain injurious methods of appropriation, would permit.* 



* CONTROL OF THE SEA FISHERIES "There is no part of the present inves- 

 tigation more beset with difficulties than to ascertain the point to which the 

 Legislature is bound to restrain the fisherman in the exercise of his art, with 

 reference to engines and to practices deemed dangerous to the preservation of 

 the breed of fish. It is here that evidence fails altogether to satisfy the mind ; 

 scarcely a single fact being advanced which is not positively contradicted, by 

 equally respectable testimony. The validity of any doctrine on these subjects 

 reposes on facts in the natural history of the animal to which it refers ; and the 

 habits of fish are very little known, even to the best writers on ichthyology. 

 In almost all such questions conflicting interests are engaged ; and complaints 

 are most commonly directed against the practices of rivals. It occurs, like- 

 wise, that when any particular fishery has ceased to be productive, the minds 

 of the sufferers, go, as it were, on a criminating inquiry, in search of a plausi- 

 ble cause for explaining the phenomenon ; and then the imagination eagerly 

 seizes upon some circumstance by which a rival exclusively profits. The rival, 

 too, necessarily strives to justify his own practices ; and thus, what one party 

 asserts the other as strenuously denies. That there should be a right to-interfere 

 where public interests are injured by individuals, requires no proof; and the 

 sea, though a common open for all to resort to, is not so much the property of 

 any individual, that he may lawfully work it to the detriment of his neighbours, 

 or of the nation at large." Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry, p. 21. 



At the same time interference was deprecated except on special justifica- 

 tion and demonstrated necessity. The Commissioners recommended that the 

 difficult questions when and where the use of trammel and trawl nets, which 

 are sometimes injurious, might be permitted or prohibited, should be intrusted 

 to a responsible administrative board, exercising a general superintendence 

 over the Irish Fisheries. With respect to sea fishery protection, they reported 

 that great injury to property arose from unrestrained violence at sea, and from 

 combinations on land. "Such violences, independently of the consequent 

 breaches of the peace, check the development of the fisheries, and enhance 

 the price of fish to the consumer ; and wherever the fishermen assemble in 

 large bodies, serious evils from these causes, are matters of every day com- 

 plaint." A force to preserve the peace, equal to encounter the difficulty, and 

 to overawe the offenders, was essential to the prosperity of the trade. For 

 this purpose the services of the coast guard, of revenue cruisers, and occa- 

 sionally of armed vessels, could be engaged. 



