66 THE BRITISH FISH TRADE. 



These truths require perhaps to be impressed on the 

 public at a moment when one section of the people is 

 endeavouring to impose restrictive regulations on fishermen, 

 and another section is trying, by an unnecessary and there- 

 fore unwise patronage, to develop an industry which is 

 already prosperous. But it must not be supposed that, 

 because free trade in fishing is better than protection, and 

 the independence of an honest man is worth more than all 

 the patronage of all the aristocracy, nothing can be done 

 either by legislation or in other ways to promote the deve- 

 lopment of British fisheries. The few pages to which this 

 essay may still extend, cannot perhaps be more usefully 

 occupied than by considering this portion of the subject. 



In the first place, the State can do what no private 

 individual can possibly do. It can collect and publish 

 periodical and authoritative statements of the condition of 

 the fisheries. This information can easily be collected by 

 officers who already exist, and no appreciable expense will 

 therefore be incurred in obtaining it. Its publication will 

 be of great advantage. In State affairs, as in other matters, 

 the possession of knowledge is essential to the administrator ; 

 and many of the wild proposals which are constantly made 

 for the regulation of the fisheries, would probably be 

 dropped if the steady and satisfactory progress of the 

 industry were established by figures. Those who desire 

 to resist the introduction of restrictive laws as well as those 

 who clamour for their passage, are, or ought to be, equally 

 interested in procuring the statistics, by which the sound- 

 ness of their own opinions must ultimately be tested. 



In the next place, the State can provide, or can ask other 

 nations to aid it in providing for what — for want of a better 

 word — may be termed the Police of the Seas. The con- 

 tinuous development of the fishery is constantly making 



