42 



the famine to Ireland, for grants and loans to construct piers, 

 quays, and harbours ; a valuable boon, as is proved by the 

 numerous applications to participate in it by parties who join 

 in the cost.* 



These figures speak for themselves. The call for ' justice to 

 Ireland' is often said to be a ' parrot-cry,' and requests for aid 

 are sometimes met by ungenerous taunts. It is, however, the 

 part of those who should deal with an even hand to see 

 whether these appeals are fairly founded. A larger number of 

 boats and men are employed in fishing in Ireland than in Scot- 

 land. Yet although the trade does not exist to the same ex- 

 tent in Ireland as in the sister country, and therefore the same 

 superintendence is not required, it does not appear that a 

 just proportion of Government assistance is maintained in 

 the case of the former ; and, with respect to the expenditure 

 appropriated to encouragement, may it not be asked whether 

 such measures are not as much needed to build up as to sus- 

 tain a trade ? 



The Scottish Fisheries are fostered by the aid of the Trea- 

 sury. The governments of France, Belgium, and Holland, ex- 

 tend much care and superintendence to those of their countries.f 



* " The applications to the Board of Works for erecting piers, &c., were 

 much more numerous than could be supplied by a grant of twice the amount 

 given by the (first) statute, evidencing in no small degree that there is a desire 

 to encourage and protect the interests of the fisheries, at all events in this par- 

 ticular." Paper of the Royal Dublin Society on the Irish Fisheries, by J. C. 

 Deane, Esq., 1847. 



f The British seas are an unbounded common, remarkable for its great 

 fertility. As far as the state can interpose, it should be its policy to attract the 

 population towards the sea-coasts. The security of the empire lies in its mari- 

 time power, and our fisheries are the nurseries for seamen. 



The Danes, a sea-faring people, who possessed themselves of all the important 

 ports of this island in the 9th and 10th centuries, carried on a lucrative trade 

 by means of these resources. The celebrated De Witt, in his political maxims, 

 computed the number of people in the united provinces at 2,400,000, and of 

 these he reckoned 450,000 obtained their living by the fisheries at sea, and 

 attributed the great superiority of Holland to its being so situated that its 

 inhabitants could draw a great part of their subsistence from the ocean. 



Philip II. of Spain, whose connexion with the Netherlands had doubtless 

 made him acquainted with the full value of this element of national wealth, 

 paid an annual sum of 1,000 for license to fish on the northern coasts of Ire- 

 land for twenty-one years. The Dutch purchased a similar privilege in the 

 reign of Charles I., for which this thrifty and shrewd people thought 30,000 

 not too high a price See Fraser on the Fisheries. Edinburgh, 4to. 1818. 



That in earlier times they furnished a staple commodity for export is to be 

 learned from many sources of history ; among others from a curious poem, 

 (introduced by the poet Campbell in his Naval History of Great Britain,) to be 

 found in Hakluyt's Voyages, entitled ' The Policie of keeping the Sea,' believed 

 to have been composed in the beginning of Edward the Fourth's reign. Towards 

 the conclusion there is a project of the then Earl of Ormond, (who may be said 

 to have represented Ireland at court,) suggesting that if one year's expense in 

 the maintenance of the French wars were employed in the reduction of that 

 island, it would answer the purpose eflPectuallj*, and produce a very considerable 

 profit annually to the English nation. Yet this, as the writer complains, was 

 Blighted, from views of private profit, to the great detriment of the public. One 



