fuck as can be acquired only by conftant habit from early youth.
The cultivation of the fifheries would afford a never failing
fupply of men fo inftructed ; would furnifh the markets with
a wholefome and nutricious food} and would increafe our
conveniency, extend our manufaaures, and promote our commerce.
For, independent of the important confideration of reducing
the prefent high price of butchers* meat, by a more ample fupply
of fiih to the feveral markets of England, whale oil is now
become fo valuable an article of confumption in Great Britain,
not only for the fafety and conveniency it affords by lighting the
ftreets of our cities and great towns at a moderate expence,
but as a fubftitute for tallow and greafe in various mamifaitures,
that it may be confidered as an indifpenfable commodity, whofe
demand is likely to increafe in proportion as arts and manufactures
are extended, and new applications of its ufe difcovered.
We ought, then, to confider both the home fifhery for fupply-
ing the markets with food, and the whale fifhery for furniihing
our warehoufes with oil, as two ftanding nurferies for the education
of feamen.
One would fcarcely infer, from the ftate of the fifheries at the
prefent day, that our legMature has ever regarded them in this
point of view. They have hitherto been carried on in a very
limited and partial manner, with encouragement juft fufficient
( a n d but barely fo) for the fupply of our own markets; when
common policy ihould induce us to open foreign markets, to take
-off the furplus of our depots. Hence it happens, and efpecially
in
in time of war, that oil fo frequently experiences a fluctuation in
its price, which, however favourable it may be to certain individuals
who can command large capitals, to whom this limited policy
confines the adventure, is difcouraging to thofe who look only
for a fair and reafonable, but certain, profit on their induftry. If
beyond the demands of the market, there was always a redundancy
of oil on hand, the price would find its level, and the
profits of the adventure be reduced more to a certainty; and, in
fuch cafe, there is no reafon for fuppofmg to the contrary, that
England might not fupply a confiderable part of the continent
of Europe with whale oil. The advantage of extending the
markets would be -an increafe of native filhermen without re-
forting to foreign filhermen.
For many years our filheries of Greenland were carried on by
means of captains, harpooners, and other officers from Holland
or the Hans Towns; even for near a century, after the bounties
allowed by Government held out a fufficient degree of encouragement
to bring up our own feamen to the trade, who are
now in ikill inferior to none who frequent the Northern Seas.
In like manner the Americans, fettled at Nantucket, almoft ex-
clufively carried on the South Sea Fifhery, before the American
war; and after the peace, which ceded Nantucket to the: United
States, they continued to fupply our fouthern adventurers, as the
Dutch had done the Northern Filhery, with captains, harpooners,
and other officers.
In one out-port of this kingdom, the obvious policy of efta-
blilhing a nuxfery of fouthern filhermen has been fuccefsfully
s s 2 attempted.