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Hence it is that failures in practice come in miserable contrast 

 to the sanguine hopes held forth. 



While all persons readily acknowledge the "abundance of the 

 resource," and the advantages that would attend prosperous 

 fisheries, these generalities are seldom followed by exertion. 

 Valuable and humane efforts have been made in several instances 

 to promote local fisheries attended with more or less success: 

 but, as a department of national industry in which the State may 

 usefully assist opinion seems to have taken a contrary direction 

 to that formerly entertained, and there is unquestionably much 

 room for hesitation. 



During the inquiry into the condition of the Irish Fisheries 

 by the Commission of 1835, a paper was composed by one of its 

 members, the late Sir Charles Morgan, as " an Historical Sketch 

 of the British and Irish Fisheries," and appended to the Report, 

 tracing the causes why the exertions made to raise them by suc- 

 cessive governments and by individuals had proved ineffectual, 

 and giving a compendium of the measures adopted. The em- 

 ployment of the fisherman the article of produce paying no rent, 

 fish being a free gift of nature to the captor might, he observes, 

 "be thought fully equal to take care of itself, and to require no 

 encouragement to call it into activity. It is therefore not with- 

 out surprise that the inquirer learns the vast efforts made by 

 powerful nations to create a Fishery, and so often made in vain/' 

 The solution of this seeming paradox he considered to "lie in the 

 perishable nature of the commodity, and the consequent dispro- 

 portion between the cost of taking, and that of preserving and 

 conveying it to the distant market. To transport fish in a fresh 

 condition, so rapidly enhances its price, that, at a small distance 

 from the sea, it becomes an article of luxury ; and its market is 

 restricted accordingly. The inferior kinds only can be generally 

 offered for sale at prices which permit their being used exten- 

 sively as articles of ordinary diet; and these are so inferior in 

 nutritious qualities, and so much less exciting to the palate than 

 animal food, that the people who can afford to purchase meat, 

 will not largely consume them." 



May not another cause of ill-success consist in the various 

 uncertain circumstances connected with a fisherman's caDing 

 and in the fact that it depends more than others upon chance ? 



The sea may be said to be a lottery, the prizes from which 

 are sometimes more injurious to industry than the blanks. 

 Whenever a business partakes of the spirit of risk* when 



* ' With regard to the Sea Fishery, the anomaly is not a little curious, that 

 the prosecutor should continue a branch of industry which does not yield a 

 steady or adequate remuneration ; yet, I apprehend, that this will be found to 

 characterize all speculations of a hazardous nature, and that such a contingency 

 enters more or less into the calculations of those who embark in it, whilst the 



