That bounties upon exportation have been
abused, to many fraudulent purposes, is very
well known. But it is not the interest of
merchants and manufacturers, the great inventors
of all these expedients, that the home
market should be overstocked with their goods;
an event which a bounty upon production
might sometimes occasion. A bounty upon
exportation, by enabling them to send abroad
their surplus part, and to keep up the price of
what remains in the home market, effectually
prevents this. Of all the expedients of the
mercantile system, accordingly, it is the one
of which they are the fondest. I have known
the different undertakers of some particular
works agree privately among themselves to
give a bounty out of their own pockets upon
the exportation of a certain proportion of
goods which they dealt in. This expedient
succeeded so well, that it more than doubled
the price of their goods in the home market,
notwithstanding a very considerable increase
in the produce. The operation of the bounty
upon corn must have been wonderfully different,
if it has lowered the money price of
that commodity.
Something like a bounty upon production,
however, has been granted upon some particular
occasions. The tonnage bounties given
to the white herring and whale fisheries may,
perhaps, be considered as somewhat of this
nature. They tend directly, it may be supposed,
to render the goods cheaper in the
home market than they otherwise would be.
In other respects, their effects, it must be
acknowledged, are the same as those of bounties
upon exportation. By means of them,
a part of the capital of the country is employed
in bringing goods to market, of which
the price does not repay the cost, together
with the ordinary profits of stock.
But though the tonnage bounties to those
fisheries do not contribute to the opulence of
the nation, it may, perhaps, be thought that
they contribute to its defence, by augmenting
the number of its sailors and shipping. This,
it may be alleged, may sometimes be done
by means of such bounties, at a much smaller
expense than by keeping up a great standing
navy, if I may use such an expression, in the
same way as a standing army.
Notwithstanding these favourable allegations,
however, the following considerations
dispose me to believe, that in granting at least
one of these bounties, the legislature has been
very grossly imposed upon:
First. The herring-buss bounty seems too
large.
From the commencement of the winter fishing
1771, to the end of the winter fishing
1781, the tonnage bounty upon the herring-buss
fishery has been at thirty shillings the
ton. During these eleven years, the whole
number of barrels caught by the herring-buss
fishery of Scotland amounted to 378,347.
The herrings caught and cured at sea are
called sea-sticks. In order to render them
what are called merchantable herrings, it is
necessary to repack them with an additional
quantity of salt; and in this case, it is reckoned,
that three barrels of sea-sticks are usually
repacked into two barrels of merchantable
herrings. The number of barrels of merchantable
herrings, therefore, caught during
these eleven years, will amount only, according
to this account, to 252,231¼. During these eleven
years, the tonnage bounties paid amounted
to L.155,463 : 11s. or 8s. 2¼d. upon every
barrel of sea-sticks, and to 12s. 3¾d. upon
every barrel of merchantable herrings.
The salt with which these herrings are cured
is sometimes Scotch, and sometimes foreign
salt; both which are delivered, free of all excise
duty, to the fish-curers. The excise duty
upon Scotch salt is at present 1s. 6d., that
upon foreign salt 10s. the bushel. A barrel
of herrings is supposed to require about one
bushel and one-fourth of a bushel foreign
salt. Two bushels are the supposed average
of Scotch salt. If the herrings are entered
for exportation, no part of this duty is paid
up; if entered for home consumption, whether
the herrings were cured with foreign or
with Scotch salt, only one shilling the barrel
is paid up. It was the old Scotch duty upon
a bushel of salt, the quantity which, at a low
estimation, had been supposed necessary for
curing a barrel of herrings. In Scotland, foreign
salt is very little used for any other purpose
but the curing of fish. But from the
5th April 1771 to the 5th April 1782, the
quantity of foreign salt imported amounted to
936,974 bushels, at eighty-four pounds the
bushel; the quantity of Scotch salt delivered
from the works to the fish-curers, to no more
than 168,226, at fifty-six pounds the bushel
only. It would appear, therefore, that it is
principally foreign salt that is used in the fisheries.
Upon every barrel of herrings exported,
there is, besides, a bounty of 2s. 8d. and more
than two-thirds of the buss-caught herrings
are exported. Put all these things together,
and you will find that, during these eleven
years, every barrel of buss-caught herrings,
cured with Scotch salt, when exported, has
cost government 17s. 11¾d.; and, when entered
for home consumption, 14s. 3¾d.; and
that every barrel cured with foreign salt, when
exported, has cost government L.1 : 7 : 5¾d.;
and, when entered for home consumption,
L.1 : 3 : 9¾d. The price of a barrel of good
merchantable herrings runs from seventeen
and eighteen to four and five-and-twenty shillings;
about a guinea at an average.[39]
Secondly, The bounty to the white-herring
fishery is a tonnage bounty, and is proportioned
to the burden of the ship, not to her diligence
or success in the fishery; and it has, I