HISTORY OF SEA- FISHERIES. 195 



Mr. Fenian, of Liverpool, a factor for the sale of 

 fish. The fishermen of that part of the coast 

 are mostly inhabitants of a village on the coast 

 called Skerries, where the houses are neater and 

 in better repair now than during the time of the 

 bounties, and the men themselves are better 

 clothed, better fed, and more industrious and also 

 more temperate than they were during the bounty. 

 Nothing was more calculated to demoralise them 

 than the bounties as they were given ; nothing 

 could have been more mischievous or more in- 

 judicious than the tonnage bounty system ; it 

 was, in fact, a bounty on idleness and perjury. 

 Their increased prosperity arose from their as- 

 tonishingly increased industry, and their greater 

 reliance on their own exertions, without looking 

 to extraneous aid. In Scotland, the fishermen 

 have been able, from the profits of their business 

 since the removal of the bounty, to replace the 

 small boats they formerly used by new boats of 

 larger dimensions, and to provide themselves with 

 fishing material of superior value. 



A Select Committee of the House of Commons 

 was appointed in 1833 to inquire into the state 

 of the British Channel Fisheries. A second Com- 



