328 HISTORY OF THE OUTER HEBRIDES. 



1749, a Corporation came into being for the promotion of 

 British fisheries, and a system of bounties was established 

 which continued until 1830, with unsatisfactory results ; 

 the bounty being paid on the tonnage, boats were equipped 

 to catch the grant rather than the fish. In 1786, the 

 British Society was established for extending the fisheries 

 of the Highlands and Isles of Scotland. The chief objects 

 of this Society were to provide employment, and thus stern 

 the tide of emigration ; and to create a new nursery of sea- 

 men by the establishment of fishing towns and villages. 

 Like its predecessors, the Company met with no permanent 

 success, although several towns, such as Ullapool, 

 Tobermory, and Pulteney Town owe their origin to its 

 operations. Only one station was established in the Long 

 Island. During the nineteenth century, the fishing 

 industry of Scotland was allowed to develop without 

 extrinsic aid, except such as was provided by the Fishery 

 Board. At the present day, the depredations of steam 

 trawlers on the coast of Lewis exercise the minds of the 

 community, in much the same way as the encroachments 

 of the Dutch fishermen disturbed the equanimity of the 

 Scottish burghs in the seventeenth century. 



While Charles I. was employed in fostering the fishing 

 industry of Scotland, he was still more strenuously 

 engaged in attempting to wean his unwilling Scottish 

 subjects from the principles of Presbyterianism, back to the 

 discipline and ceremonies of Episcopacy. His father had 

 partially succeeded in stemming the flood of popular and 

 clerical opposition to prelacy, and Charles, a more devoted 

 and less politic Episcopalian than his predecessor, had set 

 his heart on completing the work. But he quickly 

 discovered that the changes which John Knox and his 

 followers had wrought in the religious sentiment of the 

 Lowlanders of Scotland, far from being a passing phase, 

 had become permanent principles ; the Reformation in 

 Scotland was, in fact, nothing short of a Revolution. The 

 revulsion of feeling which followed the overthrow of 

 Romanism had, it is true, been modified by the insidious 



