180 



,j;brec hundred and eighty-three thousand barrels, or only tvfeirty thotl" 

 sand barrels less than the aggregate for the six consecutive years ending 

 in 1844, 



Legislation in behalf of this fisheiy has been extremely limited. Its 

 legal existence as a branch of maritime industry does not appear to 

 have been so much as recognised by the government of the United 

 States .until 1828, when an act -was passed by Congress, which author- 

 ized the collectors of the customs to issue special licenses for its prose- 

 cution, and extended to the vessels employed in it the provisions of the 

 laws then in force relative to enrolled and licensed tonnage generally. 

 It has never been allowed full protection. In 1824, the Comptroller of 

 the Treasury instructed the collectors that it was not entitled to partici- 

 pate in the bounty or allowance granted to the cod-fishery j and that per- 

 sons who "designed to claim for "bounty-fishing," ought not to be per- 

 imitted to compute the time and voyages in which their vessels caught 

 both cod and mackerel, as chance or circumstances might direct, but 

 such time and voyages only as were excluswely devoted to the catching 

 ■of the, cod. In 1832, the same officer, in a second circular, defining 

 ,the law in another particular, stated that a vessel under a mackerel 

 license, and with a "permit to touch and trade" at a foreign port where 

 slie intended to procure her salt for the voyage, having but a single 

 cable and anchor, and unable to purchase additional gi'ound^tackle in 

 the port where she was owned, would be required, on her return to the 

 United States with a cable and an anchor obtained in her necessity at 

 such port, to pay the duties thereon ; that the fish caught during the 

 voyage would not be entitled to bounty on exportation ; and that " it 

 admitted of doubt whether such fish would not be liable to duty." To 

 add, that, in 1836, Ccmgress exempted vessels licensed for and em- 

 ^ployed in this fishery from forfeiture or penalty for catching the cod or 

 fish of any other description, and prohibited the payment of bounty or 

 allowance to such vessels, is to complete a notice of the most mate- 

 rial laws and regulations which relate to it at the present time, the duty 

 imposed on foreign mackerel imported into the United States alone 

 excepted. 



This duty, prior to the tariff of 1846, was specific and ample. The 

 .protection under the ad valorem system then introduced (less than be- 

 Ibre under all circumstances) has been, and must continde to be, often 

 merely nominal. 



The modes of catching the mackerel have varied with time, arid the 

 real or supposed changes in the habits of the fish. The original 

 method was probably in seines, and in the night. John Prince and 

 J»fa<haniel Bosworlh petitioned the general court of the colony of 

 Plymouth, in 1671, in behalf of themselves and their fellow-townsmen 

 of the "little and small place of Hull," within the jurisdiction of Mas- 

 sachusetts^ to be allowed to continue to fish for mackerel at Cape Cod; 

 and stated, among other reasons, that they and others of Hull were some 

 of the first who went there ; and that by " beating about by eveningj' 

 and "travelling on the shores at all times and seasons," they had "riw- 

 cmered. the way to take them in light cts well as in dark nights.''^ This 

 shows the practice of the early settlers. The court of Plymouth, 

 however, in 1684, prohibited "the taking mackerel ashore with seines 



