Imatges de pàgina
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THE

LITERARY PANORAMA,

AND

National Begister :

For JULY, 1815.

NATIONAL and PARLIAMENTARY utmost industry to the chace, or to the

Notices.

BRITISH and FOREIGN.

REPORTS

BY THE

COMMISSIONERS

FOR THE

HERRING FISHERY.

FOR THE YEAR 1809.

Ordered to be printed, February 21, 1811. REPORT, &c. FOR THE YEAR 1810. Ordered to be printed, January 13, 1812. REPORT, &c. FOR THE YEAR 1811.

Ordered to be printed, April 14, 1814.

REPORT, &c. FOR THE YEAR 1812.

Ordered to be printed, April 17, 1815. REPORT, &c. FOR THE YEAR 1813. Ordered to be printed, Nov. 26, 1814.

...

THE lot of man is to labour for his food originally intended to "dress a garden, and to till it," his natural disposition leads him to cultivate the earth, and to employ his skill in fertilizing the humid mould, to which he is allied.When a state of punishment succeeded a state of bliss, man was still inured to eat bread by the sweat of his brow; and this, no doubt, is the lot of by far the greater portion of the human race: the Earth, their beneficent mother, yields them support. Nations seated in the midst of a Continent, direct their Vol. II. Lit. Pan. New Series. July 1.

plough they think of the produce of the water, merely as adding variety to their repasts; and fish, though not entirely unknown to them, yet is rather an occasional, than a substantial, and regular, article of their diet.

There have been people who scrupled fish as food; and whether from experience of something injurious, or from motives derived from religion, they almost abhorred it, in all its kinds, and without exception. Others decline partaking of certain species of fish, while other species they admit into their festivals, and devour with avidity.

and appearance of some kinds of fish It must be owned, that the figure have something terrific-while others, have something disgusting; yet to take disgust at the mere circumstance of form, can hardly be the dictate of wisdom. The Mosaic law forbad the eating of fish which had not both fins and scales. In Scotland, eels are considered as a species of water serpents, and habit refuses to partake of them.

The prejudices of abrogated institutions, aversion to form or figure, the injunctions of religious observances, prevail but little in Britain. Britain, as an island, surrounded on all sides by the ocean, possessing numerous ports, with a multitude of conveniences for the purpose, is invited by nature to engage vigorously in the fisheries; and to add the resources of the water, in respect of food, to those which the fertility of her soil furnishes, for the support of the greatly increased, and continually increasing, population, that forms her strength as a people, and supports her preponderance as a nation.

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exigencies of the State: if the money were saved, it is clear that it could not be engaged in promoting the fisheries:

the fisheries derived no greater advantage from this Puritanical abstineuce, that from the High Church proclamations for continuing the rite of fasting, issued by the daughter of the Convent-destroying Henry.

King Charles I. began the experiment of forming a company (in 1630 and 1633) for the procuration of fish; but the civil wars ruined the undertaking.King Charles II. (1661.) renewed his father's plan, and employed some money in the fisheries; but his pressing occasions for money, induced him to with

The permission of some religious systems in reference to the use of fish food, was, under other systems an injunction, ordaining the adoption of this aliment, with a suspension of flesh meat from the table. The fasts of the church, enjoined to be observed weekly, and during Lent, especially, forbad so much as the appearance of meat: and certain it is, that the strictness of a six weeks' or two months' fast, is felt in some parts, with accumulated weight, towards the close of the period. Some of the Greeks, who fast conscientiously, exhibit a countenance very different at last, from what it was previously.Those few members of the Church of Rome, who esteem strict fasting obliga-draw it, and the merchants who were tory, fare very little better, and would they speak out, would declare that they like long fasting nothing more than their heretic kinsfolk and friends, of John Bull's family. We are, indeed, of opinion, that occasional fasting is favourable to bodily health; but, we dare not press the principle, lest the opposition stimulus in the nature of our worthy patron, should call on us to distinguish those occasions; and when, with all imaginable gravity, we had so done, should turn him round upon us, with a personality of application, somewhat broader than might become the pink of politeness." Indeed, I see no occasion whatever and shall certainly postpone fasting, till the time when I can get no victuals. Here comes a noble round of beef, for the table: let them fast who choose it ;-truly not I."

engaged in copartnership with him, in anger withdrew their's: the plan, therefore, failed. In 1750 a Corporation was established by Act of Parliament, called the Free British Fishery; it lasted its lease of twenty one years. Often, in later times have the fisheries been the theme of eulogy; and the subject of speculation. We remember when the Herring was popularly described as

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King of the Sea," to the infinite perplexity of every school-boy who had figured in his imagination the wonderful dimensions of a whale. We remember when "Fish by Land Carriage," was inscribed in this market, and the other market; and "Authorised by Act of Parliament," deterred the butchers from hostilities against their dreaded rivals.

Alas! these ornaments shine no more: they no longer attract the eye of the frugal passenger: the labours of that generation are ended, yet fish continues as scarce as ever, not in the metropolis only, but in the interior of the kingdom. The good housewife finds this a vexation: the Politician and Statesman sym

It was by inattention to this reaction in Johu Bull's determinating faculties that Queen Elizabeth almost ruined the fisheries. She ordered and commanded her subjects, loving or indifferent, to use fish twice a week ;intending to provoke a great demand. No she provoked a something so oppo-pathize with the good housewife; the site, that fasting for conscience' sake, became confounded with fasting for poverty' sake, and the Puritans carried all voices in opposition to the authoritative edicts of her Sovereign Majesty, the Queen's grace. And yet, the successors to these Puritans, when wielding the scpetre of power, could enact and enforce, a fast of one day in the week; and direct the money saved to be applied to the

merchant who would export, and the countryman in the inner counties, who would consume, sympathise, also, each in his way;—and yet, the deficiency of fish continues.

Not the immediate furnishing to the home market only, is concerned in the extension of the fisheries: foreigners await their supply also; and the fasts of the Catholic Countries, as we have

Commissioners were appoint

already hinted, depend in great mea-, don. sure on the Protestant herring of Bri-ed under his Majesty's warrant, for car

ying into execution, an Act of the 48th of his reign, in force till June 1, 1813: and from thence to the end of the then next session of Parliament: their first Report is dated May 31, 1810. It refers wholly to the year 1809..

tain and Holland. The practice of
catching and salting fish, is, no doubt,
of the deepest antiquity; but, that mode
of curing herring which fits them for
exportation with the greatest advantage,
is comparatively modern. Early in the
fifteenth century, (about 1410 to 1416)
William Buckelz, a native of Bier
Uliet, discovered the mode of curing
and pickling herrings: his fame fol-
lowed; it even survived his decease;
for the Emperor Charles V. with his
Empress, coming into the Low Coun-
tries, made a journey to Bier Uliet,
expressly for the purpose of visiting the
tomb of Will. Buckelz,-the first bar-Sea Fishery.
reller of herring for exportation.-

The Dutch have the greatest cause to venerate his memory; for so long as they preserved the secret, and followed his maxims, they sent from fifteen hundred to two thousand herring-busses to sea, annually; and till petrified by the all-destroying power of French liberty, half that number visited our coasts, and carried off the spoils of the sea, by their superior industry, from British spectators, on British shores.

But, we do not mean to describe our countrymen as unconcerned spectators; they exerted themselves in part, and British herrings became formidable rivals to the Dutch, when most in vogue, and where those could not be had, they became very acceptable substitutes. Yet, it is generally agreed, that we do not make the most of the advantages offered us by nature, in crowding our coasts with fish of the most advantageous description. Our Island is so situated, that the vast shoals which annually proceed from the north to lower latitudes, must pass along its coasts; and their immense masses, not unequal in the whole to that of the United Kingdom, must separate at the northern point of our territory. The Reports before us refer chiefly to those parts and are accounts, more particuTerly, from the West Coast,-Glasgow, Greenock, Campeltown, Rothsay, Inverary, Stornoway, Loch Carron, and places adjacent:-from the East coast -Leith, Burntisland, Wick, and Yarmouth; Whitehaven was afterwards added; and some regard was had to Lon

The average price of herrings in 1809, is stated by the General Inspector, at 47s. on the West Coast: on the East Coast it was 42s. The value of the herrings caught that year was upwards of 200,0001.

It must be understood that the Fishery naturally divides itself into two distinctions: the Coast Fishery, and the Deep

These had been conducted in a very irregular manner. The fishermen not rarely, robbed one another; they trespassed on each other's allowed space; they used nets of unlawful interval between the meshes; and whatever regulations they might enact among themselves, the strong arm of power was necessary,-and was felt to be necessary, to render some honest, and all obedient. The first thing, therefore, was to apply to the Lords of the Admiralty for a naval officer, qualified to perform the duty of superintendant of the Fishery; with a vessel of war, to enforce his authority :— -to this officer was added another, to whom the Sheriffs of the counties of Argyle, Ross and Cromarty, and Inverness, gave a deputation; and thus the civil power acted in conjuction with the naval. When the naval officer returned from the Deep Sea Fishery, he was employed in the Frith of Forth.

The Fishermen of the Frith of Forth had taken up a notion that their grounds did not yield herring of equal size with the deep sea; they therefore used nets, the meshes of which were less from knot to knot, than the legal measure, of one inch.

After a fair allowance of time for the use of what nets were already made on this erroneous principle, the Commissioners seized and burnt all such a were not agreeable to the standard. The cons quence was, that not one half of the fishermen resorted to the ground, beleving that no fish would be caught. Most fortunately, however,

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