The Express.
London, England, 1853-09-03 00:00:00

TO CORIIE4PONDENTS.

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No one can hare stood on a Cornish headland at
the tittle of the pilchard fishery, or by Tynemonth
lighthouse, or above Dingle bay, when the herrings
etoele, or anywla re on the coast in the great mackerel
etc.*, without feeling that a grand national resource
re.nains almost witouched in our supply of fish ; nor
ithont an emotion of wonder that so much hunger
shradd have been so long submitted to, in past sea-
s.t a of adversity, while our seas. lakes, and rivers,
to, re swarming with wholesome and agreeable food.
IV: do not forget all the impotent and pernicious
kg;iilation ou the subject,—the expensive commis-
• s, the perverse bounties which always would
Lore directly t e contrary effect to what was in•
tc:ttled, nor the complaints of the ignorance of the
b teh eutestmen, and of the indolence mid spite of the
Irish, and of the smuggling of the English. We do not
forget how we used to bear complaints in the same
bre ele of the diminution of the (puma'', of fi-h in
the ,ea, and ot the cheapness of tisli in the minket—
e t.tplaists which might both bo true where toots
t:•: re restricted, by their own quality and by law,
fie 11 going out far enough to meet the shoals ; and
whoa the cheapnes, of fish, in the few markets that
th.n existed, was owing, not to its quantity, but to
the difficulty of selling it while it was good, before
onr present means of transp-•rt existed. We do not
forget the complaints of cap talists that their fisher-
men sold their produce to the French boats they met
at :•ea, and then came home with a report of scarcity,
nor yet that the sale of our cured fish to certain
countries really has fallen off in proportion to the re-
laxation in the keeping of Lent in those countries.
ll'et do not forget the difficulties and vexations that
a:..a to have always attended the simple business
of taking food out of the sea ; but we think
that all difficulties of any consequence might and
will be got rid of; and the great fact remains
tlt it for hundreds of t ears, during every one
et which more or fewer persons have died of hunger,
di:re has be:o a rich and perpetual supply of food in
our waters, to be had for the taking. We do not
make an objection to gettiug bread because we have
to turn over the soil laboriously, and sow and I
harrow, and watch and wait, and reap and thresh,
eon: grind, before we can get the food. Perhaps, if
we could gather bread as we gather blackberries, or
pic'.ed it up like manna, we should neglect it, as we
base neglected fish. Perhaps, if we had to MlMl-
isaure fish, slowly, laboriously, nod with tisk of
fai'are, like sheet, we should take to fish u we do
to bread. May it not be so:' Well, if it be so, now
is the time to try the experiment. Our French
neighbours have begun the regular practice of /Wi-
re ':tres ; and, perhepa, we cannot do better than
oat aeatly folloir their example. A report on this
subject in another column will be read with
interest. In a country like France, of such
an extent and form that its rivers are of
more consequence and its coasts of lees than with
its, the provision of fresh-water fish for it. vat
po.nilation is important to a degree which can hardly
be. overrated: but that is no reason why we, with
out preponderance of sea, should not take a lesson
from them. Their administration of Forests is an

attlinististion of Waters too; and the department
set ms to be looking well to its business. It has pub-
haled the report of a commission issued to inquire
into the means and methods of improving the supply
of river fish, by which it appears that actual expe-
ramont has proved that the rivers, even the navi-
gable rivers, might produce from ten to twenty
times as much fish as at present, and of a better
quality, by means of the practice of Alts-ot:!ure,
the principles of which are now well understood.
A veil- 11111111 amount of attention given to the &elec..
tixt• protection, and management of spawn would
javanos the supply indefinitely ; and there arc a good
ra any residents on river banks in France who al-
• Cady tell of the profitableness of the enter-
issue. While this is going on in France, we
are hearing constant complaints and warnings
of the decline of our salmon, iu quantity and quality ;
of the effect of our manufsctures and our steamers
ou the fish in our larger rivers, and of neglect in the
smaller. In our lake districts—English, Scotch, and
Isiah —the proprietors complain of the fishers, and
the fishers of the proprietors. There is all
round : a cry of monopoly here, and of poaching
there, and everywhere of the decline of the produce,
both in quantity and quality. On the coasts, matters
do not teens to go much better. At Tynemooth, the
quarrels between the French and English fishermen
are serious this year. The Culleroosts men complain
that the French come too near, intercept their pro-
duce, and tear their nets; while, at the same time, a
French stoop-of-war is actually on the spot
to see that its own countrymen are not
defrauding their employers by buying of
the English, as the Cornish men used to be
eh 'rged with doing by appointments with the French
in the Channel. The Claddagh men, famous above
all the world for standing in the old way:, and
letting nobody else pass by, are not catching more
fish as the fortunes of Galway are rising, nor yet
allowing others than Claddagh men to fish—but
some of them are going away. Some Claddagh men
have actually emigrated ; and a fact so singular seems
to mark the time when an effort may be made to get
snore fish on the went coast of Ireland, if nutchtro
else. No one who has seen the townspeople of
Galway crowding,to catch eels when some are to be
found beyond the reach of Claddagh or other
despotism, can doubt that an unlimited supply of tish
would be welcomed as a great boon in that hungry
region. Perhaps Lord CAssriteet. and other liberal
and kindiy landlords will look to it.
A remarkable concurrence of eircusustanms induces
the expectation that some great development it, the
culture and uses of fish will soon tsko place. M.A.::
discussion is going on now about the manufacture of
guano, fully equal to the Peruvian, from fah. what
the fishery for mere manure was, off our Kentish
and Essex coasts, before guano ever was heard of in
England, there are Parliamentary Reports which
show. The Stow-boat Fishery fur sprats for manure
employed 500 boats some good many years ago,
when there were only the requirement' of some east
coast farmers to be met. If the agricultural demand
of our modern England has to be provided for, a asst
extension of fishing must take place, and fish for
the table will be brought in, together with the • only
for the gu coo makers.

Again, we are obtaining more fish, an:: brczding
it into new places, in proportion as our railways
reach or approach the coast ; and the dea-nces
and short supply of meat will keep up this
expansion. Again, there is a strengtraciing
conviction abroad in the land thas we
have, and shall soon hart., soma effectual
system of arterial drainage through the removal of
the impediments which destroy the utility, fIS arte-
rial drains, of our otherwise sufEc.ient watercourses.

Whenever this is done the opportunity will be moat
favourable to the institution of fish-culture. The
preliminary survey, under the guidance of the Ord-
nance maps (which we must have by that time), will
show us where to have our preserves ; and the ricer
guardianship, whatever it may be, which will main-
tain our outfalls, will of the same time preserve our
fish. Then may the culture of fish be to the river-
side labourer the blessing (at a much cheaper rate)
that the rearing of poultry is fast becoming to the
cottager in the lane and on the common ; and th, n
map our whole public be in the way of being served
with a food which will enable it to wait the more
easi4 for the full supply of meat which will follow,
sooner or later. At the present moment, with corn
rising, mid meat getting dearer every day, let us
repeat again and again that there is a vast stock of
fund in the waters, to be had for the taking—a stock
capable of rapid and indefinite increase by the rew
mode of which our French neighbours
ILive shown us how to pursue.

Tuft Irishman and the Sootchman have come to be
considered moral antipodes—the one the type of in-
considerate impulse, the other of talculatian and .
forethought. Keeping Ulster or " the black north"
—whit's is more than three-fourths Scotch—out of
view, there may be some truth in this estimate. But
leastcrless passion sways us to the mood of what it
I lilt. aof loathes." Love is proverbially said to level
all distinctions, and theological zeal seems to have
pretty muck the same effect. At lcaat Irishmen in-
'aired by the odium theolvicum, and Scotchmen
I puff, d up by the same die ine gilinete, are as like as
two peas. The great bugbear of your staunch Irish
nom mist is a Protestant missionary ; of your
sound orthodox Scotch Presbyterian a lax
observer of the Sabbath. The difference between
them, however, is confined to the external form; the
animating spirit is the same. The Irish Romanist,
hoar, hustle, and tear the clo-hcs of proselytising
Protestant field or street preachers; the Scotch,
" unco guid," or strict Sabbatarians, hoot and hustle
those who go a pleasure sailing on Sunday, and bore
holes in the steam-boat that carries them in the hope
to sink the guilty craft. Take the same Irishmen
and Scotchmen and make them drunk with whisky,
the nations! differences will remain uneffaced by
their exaltation; but make them drunk with spiel.
teal pride and rancour and it is impossible to tell
the one from the other. The conduct of the
Scotchmen in these matters excites most surprise, for
with or without reason they have contrived to get
the character of being a reflecting, reasoning, delibe-
rating people. It they are so, and if they have yet
recovered from their theological hallucination, they
must by this time be heartily ashamed of themselves.
Let them think of what they have been doing.
A steam-boat has been bturtcd on the Clyde, to
ply between Glasgow and such points frequented by
tourists on the estuary of that river as are accessible
by a day's trip, on Sunday, just as steamboats ply,
on that day, between London and Margate, or other
watering-places. This, let us pause to observe, im-
plies no increase of what the ultra-Sabhatarians of
Scotland call Sabbath breach. For years it has
been customary with vast multitude's of the
inhabitants of Glasgow to leave the city late on
Saturday evening, and return to it early on Monday
mooting, spending the Sunday " Boon the water,'
in visiting and admiring the beautiful scenery of the
Lower Clyde. Mane who could not afford this have
been in the habit of spending the Sunday in rambles
to the pleasantest spots in the immediate vicinity of
Glieegew. The numbers of Glasgowegians who thus
indulge periodically in Sunday gulps of pure air will I
not be ;augment dby the steam-boat, the eyes of the
uncoguel" will not be so often madcsore by looking
at them. Yet a steam-boat saiiing on the waters of
the Clyde on Sunday (unless it be freighted with
goods, as well as passengers, from Liverpool) is new,
and the nos elty has stirred up to a vigor-
ous display the pose.. mate us of the repre-
sentatives of BURNS' " Holy Willie" among
the present generation. They have been " keeping
the Sabbath holy " by assembling at the Brownie-
law to hiss and hoot the passengers landing from
the steam-boat on their return ; by erecting barri-
cades, and manning them with ptasants under the
leadership of gamekeepers accustomed to exercise
summary justice on poachers, to prevent the landing
of the passengers at the heads of Highland lochs ;
and, as already hinted, by boring holes in the sinful
boat with a view to sink her, and wash out her
iniquity at the bottom of the Clyde. Granting for
a moment that the persons who seek on Sundays a
few mouthfuls of air unpolluted with smoke, and an
opportunity of gazing upon some of the most beau-
tiful scenery in Scotland in exchange for their
daily vision of common-place houses dimly looming
through the thick atmosphere of a manufacturing
town, do not observe that day in the way they ought
to do ; what is to be said of the conduct of those who
quit houses and churches to seek quarrels with—to
boot and buffet these more viet and decorous Sab-
bath breakers ? There are people whose religious
professions are apt to become more loud and ardent
under the inspiration of drink. Parliamentary re-
turns show how enormously the consumption of
whisky in Scotland is in excess of that
either of England or Ireland—an excess, some
Scotchmen allege, owing to the inquisitorial prac-
tices of Scotch Presbytery, which, preventing all
open or avowed recreation on Sunday, have driven
numbers to fall back on secret tippling as a refuge.
Charity would fain asinine that the saintly Sabbath
breakers of Scotland were inspired by whisky, but
unfortunately the most popular preachers of Glas-
gow have been employing their Sabbaths ever since
the Sunday steam-boat started in denouncing her
customers from the pulpit as " the scum of the
earth." Those denunciations, identical in character
with those which Irish mass-priests are in the habit of
hurling from the altar at the heads of electors who vote
against their favourite candidates, or heads of families
who send their children to schools where the Bible
is read, have had a similar effect.

Really our Irish and Scotch countremen ought to
bo ashamed of themselves ; the former for seeking
to stone Bible missionaries, the Pater for seeking to
drown missionaries of a non-Pharisaical Sabbath
observance. There is no excuse for either. The
Scotch delinquents aver that the Sunday pleasure
sailers the national ; the Irish delin-
(pleats say the same of the street preachers; and
wi it, rs in the periodical press who krow, or ought
to know, better, find, or affect to find, the excuse
sufficient. It is tot. Populir onslaughts on
preachers of unpopular doctrines are indications of
lingering barbarism and an unelit istian spirit. The
good that was done by the Rest followers of WESLEY
mu bringing the truths of Christianity to the notice
of mains whom Churchmen and Diasenters had been
urmble to :Lath ere now acknowledged by all. Open
air preaching was the great instrument by which
the surlier Wi...leyaus sit call their reforms. The
Irish mobs who pelt street-preaching missionaries,
and the elegant writers is newspapers who palliate
!the conduct of these wubs, ought to bethink them
that their principles and practice arc a retrograde
Imovement towards those cf the savages of the gin-
; shop and bull-ring who maltreated the Wesleyan, in
Nloorfields and Tottenham-court-road more than a
century ago. The demure and sanctified Sabbeh-
breakers of Friedland ought to bethink themselves
:hat the men whom they arc p:rserutirg only net
• as Lt. LitE;t taught, and as a greater than Lumen

taught in the corn field where his disciples were I
plucking the ears of corn. Until Irishmen and
Scotchmeo learn to listen to new and unpalatable
doctrines, without laying violent hands on those who
utter them, instead of calmly arguing the matter,
, they must be contented to have their respective
countries regarded as those out.lying parts of the
British islands, in which barbarism holds her seat
longest. To the present objects of`their persecution
they may listen without few. The Scotchmau may
take our word fur it that all the Englishmen who
make Sunday excursions into the country aro not
pickpockets or reprobates ; and the Irishman that
there is nothing blasphemous or immoral in the
pages of the Bible.