228 HSH CULTUEE. 



interests, are made and suffered to pass unq[tiestioned, 

 or, at least, unaltered when they are made; con- 

 sequently, as I hare said, it is very much from the 

 bad laws made by Government, or the want of that 

 protection which they should receive from the Govern- 

 ment, that the unsatisfactory state of our fisheries 

 for the most part proceeds. We may be told that 

 like other disastrous matters which have occurred 

 to us of late years, this treaty was a mistake, an 

 oversight, a want of judgment ; but people who 

 make mistakes equal to 3,000,0001 a year are rather 

 dangerous people to be allowed to negotiate treaties ; 

 and why should we, for no equivalent, give away 

 our own countrymen's property to the French, par- 

 ticularly a property which alone can enable them to 

 become our rivals in the mastery of the sea ? 



In speaking further of the depression of the Irish 

 fisheries, Mr. Andrews says that the quantity of salt- 

 fish imported into Ireland yearly amounts to 1,200 

 tons, valued at 27,O0OZ. ; the annual import of her' 

 rings to about 80,000 barrels, valued at 128,000?. ; 

 and this, too, at a tiaie when the fisheries around the 

 Irish eoasts are not only far more than equal to any 

 demand that can be made upon them, but, properly 

 woirked, would also be inexhaustible. Mr. Andrews, 

 i3a his Voyages from port to pod, and place to place in 



