i 5 4 THE RELATIONS OF THE STATE WITH 



limit its supply and so control the markets. This belief 

 was shared by the Legislature, and protective legislation was 

 so directly influenced by it that, although the subject does 

 not belong strictly to the question of " protection," it may 

 conveniently be discussed here. The increased supply of 

 fish and consequently its increased cheapness were the 

 objects which the Legislature had in view in its protective 

 measures. Its object was the same when it saw, or fancied 

 it saw, a trade combination to frustrate its intention by 

 deliberately keeping back the supply, or enhancing the 

 price, of the very fish which the protective laws were 

 supposed to have called into existence. 



This question is at the present moment exercising the 

 minds of the public ; and the existence of a " Billingsgate 

 ring " is, rightly or wrongly, as firmly believed in, in many 

 quarters, as the admitted existence of " cotton corners " or 

 "wheat corners" in the United States. But the " Billings- 

 gate ring " is no new nineteenth-century idea. More than 

 Early five hundred years ago the Commons " complained them 



to our Lord the King, because that the people of Great 

 Yarmouth do encounter the fishers bringing the herring to 

 the said town in the time of the fair, and do buy and fore- 

 stall the herring before they do come to the town, and also 

 the hostelers of the same town that lodge the fishers 

 coming thither with their herring will not suffer the said 

 fishers to sell their said herring, nor meddle with the sale 

 thereof, but sell them at their own will as dear as they will, 

 and give to the fishers that pleaseth them .... and so is 

 the herring set at much greater price than ever it was, to 

 the great damage of our Lord the King, of the lords, and 

 of all the people." On this ground an Act of Parliament 

 was passed in 1357 (3 1 Edw. III. Stat. 2, c. i), enacting 

 " that no herring be bought or sold in [i.e. on] the sea till 



