174 THE HERRING. 



supposed ignorant of the Government follies acknow- 

 ledged by Mr Mitchell, we, bearing this in mind, hold 

 him justified in maintaining that the herring-fishing has 

 been overrated. The fact is, that partly from envy of 

 the Dutch, partly from erroneous notions as to the 

 power of Government to supersede individual enterprise, 

 and nurse a neglected industry into sudden vigour, the 

 most absurd expedients have been resorted to in order 

 to stimulate the herring -fishery; and foolish expec- 

 tations of turning the ocean into an El Dorado have 

 repeatedly turned out as futile as the great South Sea 

 bubble. 



The encouragement of the fishery by means of a 

 bounty has been the chief obstacle to its prosecution ; 

 and this folly was persisted in long after Adam Smith 

 had shown that Parliament had been grossly imposed 

 on in regard to the benefits said to result from the sys- 

 tem. During the herring mania of last century, poli- 

 tical philosophy was disregarded, while demonstrating 

 that though the Dutch, at a distance from the chief 

 resorts of the herring, were right to employ " busses " 

 (covered vessels of from twenty to eighty tons), boats, 

 capable of following the migrations of the fish into our 

 estuaries, bays, and arms of the sea, were the most 

 suitable for the British fishermen. Never was there a 

 more obvious non-sequitur than was involved in the 

 popular argument : " Holland is enriched by herring ; 

 Amsterdam is admitted by the Dutch to be founded on 

 herring-bones ; the Dutch employ busses, therefore, 

 if we do so likewise, we shall more than rival their 

 prosperity. Let Parliament, then, grant a liberal bounty 

 upon busses." To this disjointed reasoning Parliament 

 unfortunately gave ear. Busses swarmed along the 

 British coasts ; Scotland alone, in the year 1776, sent 

 forth no less than 294 of them. But there was no in- 

 crease in the number of the captured herring, because, 

 as Adam Smith sagaciously observed, " the bounty is 

 proportioned to the burden of the ship, not to her dili- 



