1 84 THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 



Iceland coast, by a law issued in 1733, in confirmation of 

 a- privilege granted in 1682 to a Danish trading company; 

 and that the Dutch cod fishers made unlawful trading, 

 contrary to this act, their principal business, to the ruin of 

 the Danish traffic on the Iceland shores. To this, the 

 Dutch Ambassador opposed the non-acquaintance of his 

 Government with the law and privilege in question, and the 

 fact that Dutch vessels had, up to the year 1/39, constantly 

 been allowed to fish and trade unmolested on the coasts of 

 both Greenland and Iceland. The right to both was averred 

 to belong to the Dutch in virtue of certain ancient treaties, 

 one of which, dated 1447, established the rights of the 

 Dutch to free navigation " usque ad Boreae oras." In this, 

 as in former disputes of the same nature with England, 

 the historical side of the question was strenuously discussed, 

 without leading to acquiescence on either side. The 

 Dutch pretensions were advocated with considerable energy 

 by Mauricius, then Dutch Ambassador at Hamburg, who 

 though not called upon by his diplomatical duties per- 

 sonally to act in the matter, made the rights of both parties 

 the subject of very profound and ample historical investiga- 

 tion, the results of which, in the shape of a series of 

 memorials, he sent to the States-General, who drew from them 

 the materials for the notes and remonstrances they ordered 

 their minister at Copenhagen, Coymans, to present to the 

 Danish Government* Far from bringing about an agree- 



* Mauricius' several Memorials on the subject, together forming a 

 goodly folio volume, have been printed, and a copy of them is extant 

 in the Royal Netherlands Library. The volume gives astonishing 

 evidence to the mass of labour bestowed by this learned diplomatist 

 upon a matter alien to his own professional duties at Hamburg, from 

 which town the whole of the documents are dated. For the course of 

 facts and negotiations see Res. Holland, 1739, 1740, 1741 ; Res. St. Gen. 

 of the same years ; the secret Resolutions of Holland, 1740, 1742, and 



