After all the world is a large place. At the moment of writing I have
never heard of Home Rule, nor do I care two straws whether the House of
Lords is to be blown up on the fifth of November. What moves my interest,
what stirs my soul, what arouses the politician that lurks in the best of
us, is this question of the crab-pots. Shall the trawlers of Brixham be
allowed to slash at our cords and to send our wicker baskets adrift,
spoiling our marine harvests and making our larders barren against the
winter? They hover about our beautiful bay--these fiends in human shape,
with brown wings outspread--and wantonly lay waste our fishing-pots in
their reckless course, so that our crabs walk backwards into the sea. We
have had gentlefolks down from London about it, men who argue and
palaver, and wear high hats and are said to have long bills, and there is
talk of a Government cutter to protect us, towed by red tape, and the
trawlers are to cast their nets farther asea. But beware of believing
what you read in the Brixham papers,--we have no voice to represent us in
the press, and so these Brixham organs spread falsehoods about us in
every corner of the globe. A pretty pretence, forsooth, that it is the
steamers who plough up our crab-pots. Why, from Michaelmas to Christmas,
when the trawlers are away, not a single pot is disturbed from its
station, though the funnels smoke as usual in the eye of heaven. No, no,
ye hirelings of the press. Turn your mercenary quills elsewhere, beslaver
Mr. Gladstone or belabour him, arbitrate on the affairs of nations, and
throw your weighty influence into the scale of European politics. But do
not confuse the mind of the country on the question of crab-pots.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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