"BOUNTIES!" 173 



additional supplies have been obtained where no pre- 

 vious fishery existed." After perusing this, we are not 

 surprised to find Mr Mitchell disputing the authority of 

 sundry statements made by such well-informed writers 

 as Cuvier, and his editor, Professor Valenciennes, and 

 Messrs Yarrell and M'Culloch. We do not think him 

 right in demanding proof of this statement in the 

 'Dictionary of Commerce' by the last-named author: 

 " There is perhaps no branch of industry, the import- 

 ance of which has been so much overrated as that of 

 the herring-fishing. For more than two centuries, com- 

 pany after company has been formed for its prosecution; 

 fishing villages have been built, piers constructed, 

 boards and regulations established, and vast sums ex- 

 pended in bounties, yet the fishery remains in a very 

 feeble and unhealthy state." As to the concluding 

 assertion, Mr M'Culloch, in his notes on Adam Smith's 

 1 Wealth of Nations/ has evidently seen cause to mo- 

 dify it, for there he thus writes : " The character of 

 British herrings now stands deservedly high, and the 

 fishery is become a source of profit and employment to 

 a considerable number of people." We cannot, there- 

 fore, allow that Mr M'Culloch unreasonably depreciates 

 the herring-fishing, which, in the opinion of Mr Mit- 

 chell, exceeds in worth "the auriferous deposits of gold- 

 diggings." When a man has a hobby for anything, as 

 the Belgian Consul at Leith has for herring, we like 

 him none the worse for riding it boldly and taking the 

 field against all comers. But when he demands proof 

 of the assertion that the herring-fishing has been over- 

 rated, it appears to us that his zeal has blinded him to 

 what he himself declares " in truth, the herring-fishing 

 has become prosperous in spite of every obstacle thrown 

 in its way by the erroneous Government exactions and 

 prohibitions." That this is true we have superabundant 

 demonstration in his tediously lengthy " chronological 

 history of the herring-fishery." And as Mr M'Culloch 

 makes specific mention of "bounties," and cannot be 



