h at home, and get the entire benefit of the fish traffic? Will
it be believed that there is probably more money value in the seas
round Ireland than there is in the land itself? This is actually the
case with the sea round the county of Aberdeen.[7]

A vast source of wealth lies at the very doors of the Irish people.
But the harvest of an ocean teeming with life is allowed to pass into
other hands. The majority of the boats which take part in the fishery
at Kinsale are from the little island of Man, from Cornwall, from
France, and from Scotland. The fishermen catch the fish, salt them,
and carry them or send them away. While the Irish boats are diminishing
in number, those of the strangers are increasing. In an East Lothian
paper, published in May 1881, I find the following paragraph, under the
head of Cockenzie:-.

"Departure of Boats.--In the early part of this week, a number of the
boats here have left for the herring-fishery at Kinsale, in Ireland.
The success attending their labours last year at that place and at
Howth has induced more of them than usual to proceed thither this year."

It may not be generally known that Cockenzie is a little fishing
village on the Firth of Forth, in Scotland, where the fishermen have
provided themselves, at their own expense, with about fifty decked
fishing-boats, each costing, with nets and gear, about 500L. With
these boats they carry on their pursuits on the coast of Scotland,
England, and Ireland. In 1882, they sent about thirty boats to
Kinsale[8] and Howth. The profits of their fishing has been such as to
enable them, with the assistance of Lord Wemyss, to build for
themselves a convenient harbour at Port Seaton, without any help from
the Government. They find that self-help is the best help, and that it
is absurd to look to the Government and the public purse for what they
can best do for themselves.

The wealth of the ocean round Ireland has long been known. As long ago
as the ninth and tenth centuries, the Danes established a fishery off
the western coasts, and carried on a lucrative trade with the south of
Europe. In Queen Mary's reign, Philip II. of Spain paid 1000L.
annually in consideration of his subjects being allowed to fish on the
north-west coast of Ireland; and it appears that the money was brought
into the Irish Exchequer. In 1650, Sweden was permitted, as a favour,
to employ a hundred vessels in the Irish fishery; and the Dutch in the
reign of