The fish which we have said to be next of import ance to the herring in point of value, is perhaps not inferior to it in point of numbers. Like it, too, the cod is supposed to be migratory, though confined chiefly within the limits of or 450, and 68° or of latitude, and is found generally on banks covered with a considerable depth of water, and the deeper the water the better is the quality of the fish. Pt is for this reason that the great Banks of Newfound land, those near Ireland, the coast of Norway, the Orkney, and the Shetland Islands, and other banks in the North Sea, the principal of which are the Wellbank, the Doggerbank, and the Broad-forties, are resorted to as the most favourable spots. for the cod•fishery. Of all others, however, the Banks of Newfoundland are most esteemed, and are, in con sequence, the general fishing grounds 'of all Euro pean nations, more especially the English and French. Formerly the Portuguese were the great fishers on those banks, and had their establishments on shore, but their fishery, like their commerce, fell with the fall of their naval power; and they are now content to buy their fish in their own ports, brought thither by ships belonging to foreigners. The Dutch have also for many years abandoned a fishery which they found less profitable than that nearer home. Indeed, so jealous were we once of the Dutch fishing on the Banks of Newfoundland, that Sir William Monson, in his treatise of the fishery, cautions the go vernment to beware of letting them in ; " for," says he, " they are like a serpent that never stings so deadly as when it bites without hissing." The French, by the treaty of 1763 with Great Britain, were limit ed in their fisheries to the neighbourhood of the small islands of St Pierre and Miquelon : and the Spaniards, by the same treaty, agreed to abandon the Newfoundland fisheries altogether.
Since that time, however, a more formidable rival to the British fishery 'has started up in that of the Americans, who, of late years, have prosecuted the with great vigour, and with advantages which the English, with the possession of Newfound land, are unable to command; owing, in a great de gree, to the regulations by which this ancient pos session of the British empire has till very lately been governed.
In a pamphlet, entitled Considerations on the Ex pediency e Adopting Certain Measures fur the En. couragewent or Extension of the Newfoundland Fish ery, supposed to have been written by the Secretary of Lord Gambier, when Governor of that island, it is stated, that, in the year 1805, the number of vessels employed in the American fishery amounted to about 1500, carrying about 10,000 men, and that the quantity of fish caught by them amounted to 800,000 or 900,000 quintals, while the whole pro duce of the British Newfoundland fishery of that year did not exceed 500,000 quintals ; and that the number of vessels and men employed did not amount to one-half of that employed by the Americans.
The causes assigned for this increasing success on the one hand, and falling off on the other, are as follow : The New England fishery, in all its branches, is carried on by shares, each man having a propor tion of his own catch, and few or none being hired as servants on wages. By this mode the fisherman's interest being proportioned to his industry, he is ac tuated to labour by the moat powerful incentive.
The American fishermen are remarkable for their activity and enterprise, and not less so for their so briety and frugality; and, in order to be as independ ent as possible on the owner of the vessel, each fish erman victuals himself; and the crew take it in turns to manage and cater for the rest. It is hardly ne cessary to add, that men, provisions, and every other article of outfit, are procured upon much better terms in the United States than in Great Britain. But the English fishermen must not only lay in a large stock of provisions out and home at a dear rate, but must also carry out with them a number of persons to assist in the fishery, who, consequently, eat the bread of idleness on the passage out and home ; for the laws by which the colony was held were such as almost to forbid residency, and those who did reside had no power of internal legislation; they were restrained from erecting the necessary dwellings for themselves and their servants ; they were prohibited from enclosing and cultivating the land, beyond the planting of a few potatoes ; and from the importation of provisions from the United States, except only on such conditions as were not calculated to afford the residents much relief. " From a system," says the author of the pamphlet above mentioned, " the first object of which is to withhold that principle of internal legislation, which is acknowledged to be indispensable to the good govern ment of every community, which restrains the build ing of comfortable dwellings in a climate exposed to the most inclement winter, which prohibits the cul tivation of the soil for food, and restricts the im portation of it from the only market to which the inhabitants have the power to go,—from such a sys tem it is not surprising that the inhabitants of New foundland are not able to maintain a competition against the American fishermen." During the late war, however, when France was completely driven out of her fisheries in the Gulf of St Lawrence, and the islands of St Pierre and Mi quelon, the British and the resident fisheries about equalled, in the amount of fish taken, that of the A mericans in the same quarter; who employed, in the year about 1500 vessels carrying each ten men, making, in the aggregate, the enormous number of 15,000 men employed in this branch of trade alone. The English merchants of London and Poole complain, and not without apparent good grounds, of the extraordinary privileges which America en joyed at Newfoundland ; in being permitted to cure and dry her fish on shore ; which privileges, granted no doubt on an expectation that such a liberal pro-. ceeding would have paved the way to a•reciprocal friendly conduct on her part, became a source of gross abuses and of unwarrantable claims. By the assembling together of numerous fleets, they interrupt ed the occupations of our residents; they destroyed their nets, enticed away their servants, smuggled in to the colony coffee, tea, spirits, tobacco, India goods, and other articles of contraband, undersold the in habitants in stores and provisions, and added insult ing and abusive language to their manifold injuries.