166 THE HERRING INDUSTRY 



protect the fisheries as to protect the fishermen 

 from one another — in short, to regulate the 

 police of the fisheries in the North Sea outside 

 territorial waters,"^ though it incidentally 

 settled for the time the question of the defini- 

 tion of territorial waters, except as regards 

 Norway and Sweden, who objected to the 

 three-mile limit and therefore would be no 

 party to the Convention. After the war the 

 definition of ** territorial waters" and the 

 distance limit will present more difficulties than 

 ever, and not as regards fishery questions only. 

 Before 1860, therefore, there was no impor- 

 tant fresh legislation except the Convention of 

 1839, nor was there as yet any very noticeable 

 development of steam fishing. On the other 

 hand, no serious steps had as yet been taken to 

 study the life -history of the fish ; pollution of 

 every description was rife on the coasts as in the 

 rivers, and science had not yet been applied 

 to the question of the preservation and increase 

 of this great source of national food supply, 

 though politics had had their say for centuries. 

 But a change was, fortunately, at hand, and 

 in 1860 a far-reaching step was taken by the 

 appointment of a Royal Commission, consisting 

 of Professor Huxley, Sir John Caird and Lord 

 Eversley (then Mr. Shaw-Lefevre), to inquire 

 into the condition of the British sea-fisheries, 

 the desirability of the methods then in use for 

 fishing, notably beam-trawling, and the value 



1 Quarierly Review, 1913, p. 450. 



