.MTUyOA.MTIzOTc

490

[Governors reasons]

so important, a State inspection, it is believed, is indispensable. Experience has proved that Town inspection is variable and uncertain and consequently deceptive. It gives, therefore no definite character to the article inspected. As the purchaser places little confidence in such inspection, the owner of the Article, suffers a loss in selling it at a reduced price or incurs the additional expense of reinspection. Hence the interests it is believed, of such of our fellow citizens as are employed in taking and curing fish, as well as the character of our State, would be best promoted by continuing in operation here the well regulated State inspection law of Massachusetts. It is desirable also that our inspection laws, should be systematic, and as nearly uniform as the nature of the subjects to which they apply will admit. But while by the Bill under consideration the Legislature have established a town inspection, they have for all other great staples established a State inspection. If by a system of town inspection, the character of our fish should suffer in the market, the inspection of our other great staples would also command less confidence because it would hardly be known abroad what was town inspection and what was state; the manner of marking the articles as provided by the Bill in question being in this respect the same. It is also suggested whether as we now have a State inspection if it be calculated to answer the purpose for which it was established, as well as the one contemplated by the Bill, it might not be well not to change the system, inasmuch as all changes in the laws of a State, unless clearly for the public good are injurious to the people, since by