It is the more surprising that these impediments to a more extended use of fish in the metropolis, so obviously arising out of the chartered privilege of Billingsgate, should so king have been suffered to exist, especially as nothing more is required for the dissolution of this injurious monopoly, than the esta blishment of new markets. The evils of this mono poly are not of recent date. In early times, there appears to have been a regularly established fish. market at Queenhithe. In the first year of Henry III. (1226), the Constable of the Tower was ordered to compel the boats, arriving with fish, to proceed to that market; and Edward IV. directed that two out of three vessels arriving with fish, should proceed to Queenhithe, and the other remain at Billingsgate. At that period, the population of London and its en virons appears to have been about a twenty-fourth part of its present amount, yet it had then two fish markets. The market of Queenhithe, however, was suffered to drop ; and we hear of no attempt to este blish a second, until the middle of last century, when an act was passed, in the year 174g, " for making a free market for the sale of fish in the city of West minster, and for preventing the forestalling and mo nopolizing of fish." Yet, strange and unaccountable as it may appear, this act was then, and has since remained, a dead letter. Westminster, since that time, has increased its population at least three-fold, and is still without a fish-market. The act has never been repealed, and requires only the nomina tion of new and more efficient commissioners to carry it into effect. If, in the vicinity of all the bridges across the Thames, fish-markets were once establish ed, the fishermen of Deal, Dover, Hastings, Brigh ton, and other parts of the coasts of Kent and Sus sex, %squid amply supply those markets by land-car riage, with the ordinary kinds of fish in addition to the more valuable kinds brought up the Thames; and it could not fail to increase the general use of fish in and about London, if, when theR t's Ca nal shall be opened, two or three fish-markets were established near it, for the supply of Islington, Pan.
eras, Paddington, and the whole line of London along the new road, containing an immense popula tion almost entirely cut off from the use of fish. The only arguments in favour of keeping back the fish, and throwing them overboard, is the frequent wester ly wind which prevents the fishing-vessels from pro ceeding to the market up the Thames ; but that excuse is now done away by the numerous steam vessels which could easily tow up the fishing-boats.
The supply, as we have stated, is inexhaustible ; and the means are within our reach of availing our selves to any extent of that supply; but the de mand appears obviously to be neither so steady and certain, nor so extensive, as it might and ought to be; and hence the real cause of the failure of all the plans for extending the fisheries. When the catch was abundant, the fishermen had no home market to take the fish off their hands ; and a bad season im poverished the funds of those who had embarked on a larger scale for the foreign market. The pro
moters, dissatisfied, withheld their contributions ; and the fishermen, dispirited, and without capital, directed their industry into another channel • and too frequently, from their knowledge gained of the opposite coast, and new connections formed there, into a channel destructive to their morals and inju rious to the revenue.
The encouragement given by the government in the shape of bounties, was not sufficient to counter act the evils that have been stated, and appears to have contributed but little to the success of the fisheries. If a branch of trade once fairly esta blished will not support itself without being bolster ed up by bounties, it never can be worth carrying on. Bounties should only be continued for a definite time, and decreased gradually. Those on the fisher ies should be given on the quantity procured, and the quality of those cured, and not on the instrument of their production—on the fish, and not on the ves sel. It was proved by a Committee of the House of Commons, in 1785, that the herring-fishery shoo. lutely cost little short of L.20,000 annually, which, on an average of ten years, was equal to L.75 per cent. On the value of all the fish that had been taken by the vesselson which it was paid. Adam Smith has justly observed, that a tonnage-bounty, propor tioned to the burden of the ship, and not to her dili gence and success in the fishery, is not the best sti mulous to exertion • it was an encouragement for fit.. ting out ships to catch, not the fish, but the bounty ; or to induce rash adventurers to engage in concerns which they do not understand, and cause them to lose, by their ignorance, more than is gained by the liberality of Government. The carelessness of such persons, and the ignorance of those employed by them in curing and packing the fish, not only robbed the public purse, but destroyed the character of the article in the foreign market; where, if saleable at all, it fetched only an inferior price, while the skill and attention of the Dutch secured for their fish that preference to which they were justly entitled. The change of the bounty, however, from the tonnage to the quantity and the quality of the fish caught and cured, with the regulations adopted by the acts of 48th and 56th Geo. III. have had the good effect of raising the character, and consequently increasing the demand for British fish in the foreign markets, where the herrings in particular are now held in equal esteem with those of the Dutch. This bounty, granted by the act 48th Geo. III. c. 110, is 2s. per barrel on all herrings branded by the proper officers, and 4s. a barrel granted by the act 55th Geo. III. c. 94, and is so considerable, that, at this time, it amounts to a sum not less than L.20,000 a-year.
Nothing can more strongly exemplify the gqod effects arising from the measure of shifting the boun ty from the tonnage to the actual quantity of fish taken, gutted, and packed, than the following offi cial return, for the year ending 5th April 1818 :