142 THE RELATIONS OF THE STATE WITH 



can hardly be estimated, but must amount to several, 

 millions sterling every year ; which has ramifications in 

 almost every branch of trade, commerce, and manufacture ; 

 the pursuit of which directly affects such important interests 

 as those of navigation and proprietary rights, and which 

 supplies not only the population of this country, but many 

 foreign and colonial communities, with a considerable portion 

 of their daily food, and with a variety of other articles in 

 every-day use such an industry as this has, naturally, 

 strong claims on a large share of the attention of the State, 

 and compels its interference, directly or indirectly, in many 

 different directions. From very early times, not only in 



fishing population of 150,000 does not seem to be excessive. The 

 Scotch Herring Board estimate the average value of the 14,809 boats 

 engaged in the herring, cod, and ling fisheries at 42 each, of their 

 nets at 45 per boat, and of their lines at 8 per boat. This average , 

 applied to the 33,000 boats, would give a gross value of considerably 

 over 3,000,000 sterling. Such a calculation takes no account of the 

 large and powerful steamers engaged in the fish "carrying" trade, 

 nor of the whaling and sealing fleet, nor of other ocean-going vessels 

 directly engaged in the fisheries. The figures must be taken as 

 representing merely what may be called the food-fisheries carried on 

 in the seas immediately surrounding our coasts. Even then they 

 probably err, if at all, on the side of moderation. An estimate of the 

 value of the produce of the fisheries is still less easy. The quantity 

 of fish of all kinds delivered at Billingsgate Market rnainly the 

 produce of the British fisheries in 1880 was over 120,000 tons. This 

 quantity, at an average price of only 6d. per lb., would represent a 

 value of 6,720,000 as a portion only of the consumption of the 

 metropolis alone. The value of the produce of the Scotch herring 

 fisheries alone, in 1881, was probably not less than 3,000,000. 



A Parliamentary return of the quantity of fish conveyed inland by 

 railway from each of the principal fishing ports of the United Kingdom 

 states that the quantity so carried in 1881 was, in England, 206,381 

 tons ; in Scotland, 59,259 tons ; in Ireland, 7312 tons : total, 272,952 

 tons, which, at 6d. per lb., would be worth 15,288,000 (nearly). 



