lo BRITISH FISHERIES 



the charge of the Commissioners of Public Works, 

 who, by Acts of 1842 and 1848,^ were given 

 almost absolute power to make by-laws for the 

 " government, protection, and improvement " of 

 the sea-fisheries. Numerous by-laws were indeed 

 made by this body, but no actual administration 

 existed. I shall refer to the state of the adminis- 

 tration in Ireland later on, and will only note 

 here that the authority there had to deal with 

 economic conditions without parallel in either of 

 the sister countries. 



The fisheries in Scotland were regulated in a 

 very different spirit. A fishery board had been 

 formed in that country in 1808, expressly for the 

 purpose of encouraging the fishing industry — 

 chiefly the capture and curing of herring. This 

 authority, later on, took cognisance of other 

 matters than the fostering of the growing herring 

 fishery and curing industry. They had to 

 administer the Convention Act and other enact- 

 ments of a very special character. Generally, 

 the Scottish authority interpreted its powers in a 

 spirit of great discretion, but about the beginning 

 of the sixties a situation of much gravity arose.^ 



About 1 848 a rival method of catching herrings 

 came into use in the Firth of Clyde. The older 



1 5 and 6 Vict. c. io6 (1842), and 11 and 12 Vict. c. 92. 



2 There is an excellent account of the Scottish Trawling Acts by 

 Fulton in Eighteenth Annual Report of the Fishery Board of Scotland, 

 part iii. p. 242. 



