1168 MISCELLANEOUS. 



Gorges and other members of the council, caused a renewal of the 

 clamor, and of the demand that the American fishing ground should 

 be declared free and open to ah 1 the subjects of the realm. 



On the meeting of Parliament in 1624, the pretensions of the council 

 were again assailed with eloquence and power. Sir Edward Coke,* 

 Speaker of the Commons, one of the most eminent of English lawyers, 

 and now in his old age, indignantly demanded the revocation of the 

 odious restriction. Sir Ferdmando Gorges had been summoned and 

 was present. "Your patent," thus was Gorges addressed by Coke 

 from the Speaker's chair "Your patent contains many particulars 

 contrary to the laws and privileges of the subject; it is a monopoly, 

 and the ends of private gain are concealed under color of planting a 

 colony." "Shall none," he said in debate, "shall none visit the sea- 

 coast for fishing? This is to make a monopoly upon the seas, which 

 wont to be free. If you alone are to pack and dry fish, you attempt a 

 monopoly of the wind and sun." 



The Commons prevailed a second time, but the bill to revoke the 

 charter did not receive the royal assent. Still, the council were for- 

 ever entirely powerless. Though protected by their sovereign, public 

 sentiment compelled submission; and abandoning their own plans, 

 they continued to exist as a corporation, merely to make grants of 

 lands to other companies, and to individual members of their own 

 number. 



James bequeathed the quarrel to his son. The iU-fated Charles 

 had hardly ascended the throne before the Commons passed a bill for 

 the maintenance and increase of shipping and navigation, and for the 

 liberty of fishing on the coasts of Newfoundland, Virginia, and New 

 England. This bill was lost in the House of Lords, but the spirit of 

 the Commons w T as not repressed. In a strong representation of griev- 

 ances, which they laid before Charles, they insisted that the restraint 

 of the subject in the matter of fishing, with all the necessary inci- 

 dents, was of national concern and required redress. 



This State paper, and their refusal to grant the King a subsidy, 

 caused the dissolution of Parliament. 



It is from this dissolution that we date the disagreements between 

 Charles and his people, which, in their termination, overturned a 

 dynasty and carried the monarch to the block. In truth, I am led to 

 conclude that the question of "free fishing" was the first in the series 

 of disputes relative to the prerogatives of the crown on the one side, 

 and the rights of the subject on the other. 



The political consequences of the discussions so briefly considered, 

 might well claim further attention ; but leaving them here, the results 

 to the fisheries next demand our notice. These, for the moment, 

 were disastrous in the extreme, since I know of no other explanation 

 to the fact, that during the five years embraced in the struggle the 

 number of English fishing-vessels on the whole extent of our coast 

 diminished much more than one-half, or from four hundred to one 

 hundred and fifty; while it is certain that in the alarm which pre- 



* He was born in 1550; he became solicitor general in 1592, and attorney general soon 

 after. His conduct in the latter capacity, during the trials of the Earl of Essex, and 

 the celebrated Sir Walter Raleigh, has been severely and justly condemned. Coke, in 

 1613j was appointed chief justice of the Court of King's Bench. Towards the close of 

 his life, he devoted himself to the cause of the subject, in opposition to the pretensions 

 of the crown; he died in 1634. 



