while the liver is fresh and sweet, would insure a brisk and steady sale for the article.

Whales, I understand, are constantly seen on the coast. A large spermaceti whale was stranded on Roundstone Bay some years since, which, it is said, "measured seventytwo feet in length, sixteen in thickness, and seventeen between the two forks of the tail: it appears that considerable difficulty was experienced in killing it: the oil, which is the only part of any value, sold for £1200; a large portion of it was at first allowed to escape, the people not being aware of its value." I do not anticipate that the fisheries can be much extended until the people possess boats suited to so exposed a coast, and are properly provided with nets. The fishery on this coast would, I have no doubt, alone prove sufficient to give employment to the whole population, if properly conducted, and if sufficient capital was forthcoming; as, like other branches of industry,

*Letters from the Irish Highlands.'

it cannot be properly carried on without a reasonable amount of capital.

As an instance of the amount of employment which a well-conducted fishery is capable of affording, it may be mentioned that in 1827 the pilchard fishery on the coast of Cornwall afforded direct employment to 10,521 persons, and that the amount of capital invested amounted to £441,215. In Holland, the fisheries have long afforded vast and remunerative employment; their importance may be judged from the following statement of the distribution of the population of the StatesGeneral in 1669, from which it appears that out of a population of 2,400,000, no less than 450,000 were engaged in the fisheries. The great Pensionary, De Witt, boasted with truth that every fifth man earned his subsistence by the great fishery; and that Holland derived her main support from it, and that the herring fishery ought to be considered as the main arm of the republic. The extent of the great fishery gave rise to the proverb that the foundation

of Amsterdam was laid on herring-bones. It is a remarkable circumstance, and one borne out by experience, that where nature does least, art effects most;-instance, the degree of perfection which agriculture has attained in Scotland on a soil naturally barren and unproductive. The progress made by the Dutch in the fisheries is owing principally to the circumstance that they are without natural resources: their country affords them no corn; they are almost without manufactures; they are, in consequence, thrown on the resources afforded by the fisheries to procure them corn and the other necessaries of life in exchange. There is nothing, I think, which would tend more to encourage and promote the fisheries on this coast than by affording cheap and expeditious transit to the interior, so as to open up markets for the produce of the fishery. At present, the distance is so great from any market town as to render it quite useless as regards the consumption of fresh fish. The Government have, from time to time, passed various

Acts with a view to extend the British Fisheries; they have, however, unfortunately all proved abortive: one of the last granted, that of giving bounties, which was repealed in 1830, so far from extending the fishery seems to have had the contrary effect, and led to great abuses. Adam Smith pithily remarks, speaking of the tonnage bounty which formerly existed; "The bounty to the white herring fishery is a tonnage bounty, and is proportioned to the burden of the ship, not to her diligence or success in the fishery; and it has, I am afraid, been too common for vessels to fit out for the sole purpose of catching not the fish but the bounty. In the year 1759, when the bounty was at 50s. per ton, the whole buss fishery of Scotland brought in only four barrels of sea sticks; in that year each barrel of sea sticks cost Government, in bounties alone, £113. 15s.; each barrel of merchantable herrings £159. 7s. 6d."

As another instance, it may be mentioned that it was proved before a Committee of the House of Commons, in 1785, that the

herring fishery absolutely cost little short of £20,000 annually, which on an average of ten years was equal to 75 per cent. on the value of all the fish that had been taken by the vessels on which it was paid. These facts afford a proof how much money may be squandered by Government without producing a beneficial result.

"It is the want, we conceive, of a steady and constant demand, and not of supply, which has at all times operated to the discouragement of the British fisheries. That the supply of fish is most abundant, and indeed inexhaustible, on the coast of Great Britain, has never been called in question. Sir John Borough says, 'The coasts of Great Britain do yield such a continued sea harvest of gain and benefit to all those that with diligence do labour in the same, that no time or season of the year passeth away without some apparent means of profitable employment, especially to such as apply themselves to fishing, which from the beginning of the year to the latter end continueth upon