OUE SEA FISHERIES. 215 



emphatically from youth up. He was a rough oak 

 knob, that grew the harder the more he was knocked 

 about ; and if he lived hard, he certainly died hard — 

 harder, perhaps, than any mariner afloat, and that was 

 his speciality. Now Jack has become an exotic. He 

 is hand-reared and frame-reared, and has succession 

 and forcing ships allotted to him; is careiully ma- 

 nured and tenderly watered, instead of profusely 

 grogged and backied, and there he stands in beautiful 

 white duCks and blue shirts, all in a row, like pots 

 of geraniums at a nurseryman's. Now, put training 

 ships and schools in the one scale, and the bounty in 

 the other ; consider carefully the materials produced 

 by the two, and I think I may venture to reassert, 

 that the system of bounties was a wise and, for us, a 

 necessary one.' 



So little is the subject of our sea fisheries thought 

 of or understood, that, save the persons actually en- 

 gaged in them, no one knows or cares anything about 

 it. Where the haddock comes from, which the modem 

 Briton eats for his breakfast ; or whence the cod, that 



1 A commis3ion is eren now (August, 1864) inquiring into the 

 state of our coast fisheries, and has been at work for several 

 months. But from the proceedings of the commission hitherto, 

 and the fact that the action of the Government for many years has 

 not been favourable to our sea fisheries wherever it has interfered, 

 I do not anticipate much benefit from its labours. 



