have been urged against it on the score of its inhumanity. The reader must be acquainted with Goldsmith's remarks on the herring fishery of his days. 'A few years ago,' he says, 'the herring fishing employed all Grub Street; it was the topic in every coffee-house, and the burden of every ballad. We were to drag up oceans of gold from the bottom of the sea; we were to supply all Europe with herrings upon our own terms. At present, however, we hear no more of all this; we have fished up very little gold that I can learn; nor do we furnish the world with herrings, as was expected.' We have, in this brief passage, a history of all the more sanguine expectations which have been founded on herring fisheries. There is no branch of industry so calculated to awaken the hopes of the speculator, or so suited to disappoint them. So entirely is this the case, that were we desirous to reduce an industrious people to the lowest stage of wretchedness compatible with industry, we would remove them to some barren district, and there throw them on the resources of this fishery exclusively. The employments of the herring fisher have all the uncertainty of the ventures of the gambler. He has first to lay down, if we may so speak, a considerable stake, for his drift of nets and his boat involve a very considerable outlay of capital; and if successful, and if in general the fishery be _not_ successful, the _take_ of a single week may more than remunerate him. A single cast of his nets may bring him in thirty guineas and more. The die turns up in his favour, and he sweeps the board. And hence those golden dreams of the speculator so happily described by Goldsmith. But year after year may pass, and the run of luck be against the fisherman. A fishing generally good at all the stations gluts the market, necessarily limited in its demands to an average supply, and, from the bulk and weight of the commodity, not easily extended to distant parts: and the herring merchant first, and the fisherman next, find that they have been labouring hard to little purpose. Again, a fishing under average, from the eccentric character of the fish, is found almost always to benefit a few, and to ruin a great many. The average deficiency is never equally spread over the fishermen; one sweeps the board--another loses all. Nor are the cases few in which the accustomed shoal wholly deserts a tract of coast for years together; and thus the lottery, precarious at all times, becomes a lottery in which there are only blanks to be drawn. The wealthy speculator might perhaps watch such changes, and by supplementing the deficiency of one year by the abundance of another, give to the whole a character of average; but alas for the poor labouring man placed in such circumstances! The yearly disbursements of our Scottish Fishery Board, in the way of assistance to poverty-struck fishermen, unable even to repair their boats, testify all too tangibly that they cannot regulate their long