FISHERY LAWS 123 



trawl in the Firth, or to sell the fish caught there in 

 Scottish ports. England, seeing herself placed at a 

 disadvantage, and to the profit of foreigners, protested. 

 The question, said M. Roy, remained at a standstill for 

 years ; the law was ill applied and infringed without 

 much trouble by the Grimsby trawlers, who often pre- 

 ferred to pay the fine and fish notwithstanding. 



For the rest, there was another means of evading the 

 difficulty which was still more compromising : namely, 

 for the English trawlers to fly the Norwegian flag, as the 

 Norwegian law of armaments permits a vessel to hoist 

 the Norwegian flag providing there be a Norwegian on 

 board the vessel. This ingenious procedure was applied 

 upon an enormous scale, and the " Grimsby Norwegian " 

 came into being all on board of her English "except 

 the cook and the flag." In 1905 the North Sea Fishery 

 Protection Association sent up to Parliament a projected 

 Bill, which would have applied the Scottish law to 

 foreigners. The Bill was not debated. In 1908 Mr. 

 Sinclair, M.P., moved that the fish of the Moray Firth 

 should not be sold in any port of the United Kingdom. 

 Nothing definite has as yet occurred ; but the projected 

 Bill has excited the most lively discussion, and has even 

 been dubbed the "Bill for starving England." The 

 history of this Parliamentary episode is interesting, being 

 unique ; it is the first attempt in the direction of pro- 

 tecting the piscine nursery in free waters or the fish of 

 the North Sea ; it is the first limit which has been 

 imposed upon the liberty of the capture and sale of fish. 

 I have said the first attempt, the first limit; for in my 

 opinion the protectionist tendencies which are daily 

 undergoing further development in the continental waters 

 will finally prevail over certain areas of the sea. But 

 the Scotch problem will not be solved unless one of two 



