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BILL RELATIVE TO THE SALE OF FISH, &c.

The inhabitants of Westminster had long laboured under the want of a
fish-market, and complained that the price of this species of provision
was kept up at an exorbitant rate by the fraudulent combination of a few
dealers, who engrossed the whole market at Billingsgate, and destroyed
great quantities of fish, in order to enhance the value of those that
remained. An act of parliament had passed, in the twenty-second year of
his present majesty's reign, for establishing a free market for the sale
of fish in Westminster; and, seven years after that period, it was found
necessary to procure a second, for explaining and amending the first.
but neither effectually answered the purposes of the legislature. In
the month of January, of the present session, the house took
into consideration a petition of the several fishermen trading to
Billingsgate market, representing the hardships to which they were
exposed by the said acts; particularly forfeitures of vessels and
cargoes, incurred by the negligence of servants who had omitted to make
the particular entries which the two acts prescribed. This petition
being examined by a committee, and the report being made, leave was
given to bring in a new bill, which should contain effectual provision
for the better supplying the cities of London and Westminster with fish,
and for preventing the abuses of the fishmongers. It was intituled, "A
bill to repeal so much of an act passed in the twenty-ninth of George
II. concerning a free market for fish at Westminster, as requires
fishermen to enter their fishing vessels at the office of the searcher
of the customs at Gravesend, and to regulate the sale of fish at the
first hand in the fish-markets of London and Westminster; and to prevent
salesmen of fish buying fish to sell again on their own account; and to
allow bret and turbot, brill and pearl, although under the respective
dimensions mentioned in a former act, to be imported and sold; and to
punish persons who shall take or sell any spawn, brood, or fry of fish,
unsizeable fish, or fish out of season, or smelts under the size of
five inches, and for other purposes." Though this, and the former bill
relating to the streets and houses of London, are instances that evince
the care and attention of the legislature, even to minute particulars
of the internal economy of the kingdom, we can hardly consider them as
objects of such dignity and impor