200 THE RELATIONS OF THE STATE WITH 



invested in this particular branch of the fishing industry 

 is enormous. Some of the larger trawlers measure as 

 much as 90 or 100 tons, and cost, when fitted with gear 

 and stores complete, not far short of 2000 a piece. To 

 annihilate such an industry by prohibiting the use of the 

 trawl altogether, or, as some propose, to forbid trawl 

 vessels to fish at night, or within a certain hard and fast 

 limit from the shore, because they interfere with some 

 other mode of fishing is one thing. To place so powerful 

 an interest under restraint, so that it may not tyrannously 

 override modes of fishing perhaps less imposing, but none 

 the less useful and of far greater antiquity, is another thing. 

 The power which the State has taken by a recent Act to 

 prohibit, on good cause shown, the use of trawls in localities 



Protection of where beds of clams, mussels, or other mollusca exist is 

 perfectly justifiable on the ground that such beds are of 

 immense importance to the line fishermen for the supply 

 of bait, and that they are liable to be rapidly exhausted if 

 incessantly fished over. But even this power will be exer- 

 cised only where adequate proof of its necessity exists. 

 No such proof has certainly yet been afforded of any 

 substantial damage being done to the fisheries by the 

 alleged destruction by trawls of the spawn and fry of fish. 



Effect of the The Scotch Herring Fishery Board, in 1861, prohibited the 



beam trawl 



on herring use of the beam-trawl upon the Traith, at the urgent 



spawn and - . - , ,, 11,-, ... 



fisheries. request of the fishermen, who alleged that it was injurious 

 to the spawn of herrings. Satisfactory proof was afforded 

 that this prohibition had not the slightest effect in im- 

 proving the herring fisheries in the neighbourhood, and it 

 was removed. Its removal, on the other hand, has not had 

 the slightest injurious effect on the herring fisheries. 



This experience is the more remarkable from the fact 

 that the spawn of the herring is the only spawn of sea fish 



