132 



"This is the great misfortune of bounties when they are not given with 

 great judgment and care. Relative to the fisheries the profit is so great, 

 that all acquainted with them will engage as far as their capital will 

 admit; whatever bounties are given therefore should not be with a view 

 to instigate men possessed of capital, for they do not exist, but to 

 put capitals into the hands of those who will certainly make use of them. 

 It appeared in the minutes of the Lough Swilly fishery that one boat and 

 the nets sufficient cost .20; the best bounty would be to give boats and 

 nets to men used to the fishery, because few are able to buy or build them. 

 To give a premium on the report of the herrings or upon the tonnage 

 of the boats will not answer, for it supposes them actually taken, and 

 built, that is, it supposes the very difficulty got over which want of 

 money makes perpetual. 



"Before the boat is in the fishery it must be built, and before the fish 

 are exported they must be taken; those who have money to do either 

 will go to work without any bounty, the profit alone being sufficient. 

 In countries so very poor, the first steps in such undertakings are the 

 most difficult; and to assist in overcoming the early difficulties is what 

 the Legislature should aim at. Giving boats and nets to men that would 

 certainly use them does this, and would be productive of great national 

 good; always supposing that frauds and jobbing were guarded against; 

 if they are permitted to creep in, as in giving spinning wheels, the 

 mischief would be far more than the benefit. .20,000 per annum thus 

 expended would give 1,000 boats, which would soon accumulate to a 

 vast number, and if the effect was so great as to find the herrings regorge 

 in the home market, then would be the time to drive them out by a 

 bounty on the export, if their own cheapness did not bring the effect 

 without it. I am far from recommending a new system of bounties 

 upon an object that had not received them before, they have been long 

 given or jobbed, all I mean is, that if the public is burthened with such 

 payments, care should be taken that they are given in the mode that 

 promises to be most advantageous." 



LOAN FUNDS. " General conclusions drawn by Messrs. Townsend and 

 Barry (two of the Commissioners of Inquiry), from the information 

 received through the medium of evidence; and the answers to the 

 printed queries, as well as from their personal observations on their 

 tour of inquiry." [Printed in the Appendix to the Report of 1836.] 



"That the resource derived from the Loan Fund of the late Fishery 

 Board was, in most instances, admitted to have been extremely benefi- 

 cial to the fishing classes. 



"That wherever a reasonable degree of caution was exercised in the 

 administration of the fund, and of diligence in its final collection, the 

 smallness of the loss was most extraordinary, as in the cases of Dingle, 

 Glandore, and Baltimore, where out of a sum of 2,022 17s. 9c?., due at 

 the period of the extinction of the late system of encouragement, 

 1,870 Is., was within the following year repaid to the department 

 under whose management it was collected. 



" That it is very generally considered that the system under which the 

 fund was managed, both as to the periods for which the loans were 

 made and the mode of making them, was extremely defective and 

 objectionable. 



"That the beneficial effects of a judicious system of general loans to 



