THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 223 



afloat and lost their freshness, while foreign orders upon 

 the Dutch market could not be executed for lack of 

 adequate supplies. Prices unnaturally low were thus 

 succeeded by prices unnaturally high, or rather by a 

 grievous understocking of the market. As a fact, this 

 arrangement was certainly a monument of stolidity in 

 economical legislation. But the remedy proposed by the 

 men of Amsterdam was little better. They wanted, indeed, 

 to have herring-hunting free throughout the season, but 

 only in order to have all the herring brought in confided to 

 the care of one central committee, who should limit the 

 sale so as never to severely depress the market. They 

 wanted, in a word, to monopolise into one single hand the 

 whole of a trade already monopolised for the benefit of 

 those few who could afford keeled and square-rigged 

 vessels. While the law limited the cure-herring fishery to 

 comparatively few ships, they wanted to limit the market- 

 able production of those ships to such quantities as should 

 suit the convenience of a body of narrow-minded ship- 

 owners and dealers, anxious, not to sell much fish, but only 

 to make a high figure for such fish as they could manage 

 to sell. The main end of the plan was, not to extend, but 

 to restrict tJie business. 



There has been a vast amount of written and oral 

 discussion of this plan. The permanent Committee of the 

 Provincial States,* before whom the matter was laid, called 

 a meeting of parties concerned at Lisse, and had heaps of 

 memorials presented to them, both before and after that 

 meeting. The College of the Grand Fishery for Holland 

 was then, as in former times, divided into two Chambers 

 or " Departments," one for Amsterdam and the towns in 

 North Holland, and one for the towns on the Maas ; and 



* Gedeputeerde Staten. 



