The English, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, had employed, generally, about one hundred and fifty vessels in the Newfoundland fishery. About 1670 we find them reduced to eighty, and one hundred, the inhabitants of New England beginning now to supplant them. A little before this, the British Parliament perceiving that their citizens were unable to subsist on the scanty profits which sufficed for their poorer competitors, endeavored to give them some advantage by prohibiting the importation of foreign fish; and, at the close of the century, they formed some regulations for their government and protection, and remitted to them some duties. A successful war enabled them, in 1713, to force from the French a cession of the Island of Newfoundland; under these encouragements, the English and American fisheries began to thrive. In 1731 we find the English take two hundred thousand quintals of fish, and the Americans two hundred and thirty thousand, besides the refuse fish, not fit for European markets. They continue to gain ground, and the French to lose it, insomuch that, about 1755, they are said to have been on a par; and, in 1768, the French have only two hundred and fifty-nine vessels, of twenty-four thousand four hundred and twenty tons, nine thousand seven hundred and twenty-two seamen, taking two hundred thousand quintals, while America alone, for some three or four years before that, and so on, to the commencement of the late war, employed six hundred and sixty-five vessels, of twenty-five thousand six hundred and fifty tons, and four thousand four hundred and five seamen, and took from three hundred and fifty thousand to upwards of four hundred thousand quintals of fish, and England a still greater quantity, five hundred and twenty-six thousand quintals, as is said.

Spain had formally relinquished her pretensions to a participation in these fisheries, at the close of the preceding war; and, at the end of this, the adjacent continent and islands being divided between the United States, the English and French, (for the last retained two small islands merely for this object,) the right of fishing was appropriated to them also.

France, sensible of the necessity of balancing the power of England on the water, and, therefore, of improving every resource for raising seamen, and seeing that her fishermen could not maintain their competition without some public patronage, adopted the experiment of bounties on her own fish, and duties on that of foreign nations brought into her markets. But, notwithstanding this, her fisheries dwindle, from a change taken place, insensibly, in the character of her navigation, which, from being the most economical, is now become the most expensive. In 1786, she is said to have employed but seven thousand men in this fishery, and to have taken four hundred and twenty-six thousand quintals; and, in 1787, but six thousand men, and one hundred and twenty-eight thousand quintals. She seems not yet sensible that the unthriftiness of her fisheries proceeds from the want of economy, and not the want of markets; and that the encouragement of our fishery abridges that of a rival nation, whose power on the ocean has long threatened the loss of all balance on that element.

The plan of the English Government, since the peace, has been to prohibit all foreign fish in their markets, and they have given from eighteen to fifty thousand pounds sterling on every fishing vessel complying with certain conditions. This policy is said to have been so far successful, as to have raised the number of seamen employed in that business, in 1786, to fourteen thousand, and the quantity of fish taken, to 732,000 quintals.

* * * * * * * *

The fisheries of the United States, annihilated during the war; their vessels, utensils, and fishermen destroyed; their markets in the Mediterranean and British America lost, and their produce dutied in those of France; their competitors enabled by bounties to meet and undersell them at the few markets remaining open, without any public aid, and, indeed, paying aids to the public;—such were the hopeless auspices under which this important business was to be resumed. Yet it was resumed, and, aided by the mere force of natural advantages, they employed, during the years 1786, 1787, 1788, and 1789, on an average, five hundred and thirty-nine vessels, of nineteen thousand one hundred and eighty-five tons, three thousand two hundred and eighty-seven seamen, and took two hundred and fifty thousand six hundred and fifty quintals of fish. * * * And an official paper * * shows that, in the last of those years, our exportation amounted to three hundred and seventy-five thousand and twenty quintals, and thirty thousand four hundred and sixty-one barrels; deduction made of three thousand seven hundred and one quintals, and six thousand three hundred and forty-three barrels of foreign fish, received and re-exported. * * Still, however, the calculations * * which accompany the representation, show that the profits of the sales in the years 1787 and 1788, were too small to afford a living to the fishermen, and on those of 1789, there was such a loss as to withdraw thirty-three vessels, of the town of Marblehead alone, from the further pursuit of this business; and the apprehension is, that, without some public aid, those still remaining will continue to withdraw, and this whole commerce be engrossed by a single nation.

This rapid view of the cod fishery enables us to discern under what policy it has nourished or declined in the hands of other nations, and to mark the fact, that it is too poor a business to be left to itself, even with the nation most advantageously situated.

It will now be proper to count the advantages which aid, and the disadvantages which oppose us, in this conflict.

Our advantages are—

1. The neighborhood of the great fisheries, which permits our fishermen to bring home their fish to be salted by their wives and children.