212 THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 



as a fact, unfit for exportation. Next, said the Minister in 

 defence of the Bill, it is a requisite for first-rate cured-herring 

 that the fish be cured quite fresh, whence buss-fishermen 

 are enjoined to throw overboard in the morning all such 

 herring of yesterday's capture as they have been unable to 

 cure in the night ; and bum-boats, being much less strongly 

 manned, could not carry out this point of the law with 

 sufficient precision. To this argument it might have been 

 objected that if bum-boats carried fewer hands, they also 

 shot fewer nets, and had less fish to cure in one night. 

 Subsequent events have fully proved that herring can be 

 cured in bum-boats with entire success. Thirdly, Govern- 

 ment argued that it had been enacted in 1801, that no vessel 

 should sail home in the early part of the season unless with 

 a full cargo ; and the smaller vessels, having sooner com- 

 pleted theirs, could have the immense privilege of the early 

 market all to themselves if allowed to cure. The true 

 reason for maintaining the monopoly, to wit, the preponder- 

 ance of the Grand Fishery interest, peeped through this 

 last argument ; and in preferring it, Government omitted to 

 take into account the institution of sale-hunting, by which 

 the first cured-herring was annually brought into port much 

 earlier than a bum-boat could ever hope to make the shore 

 with a complete cargo. Another pretended danger of 

 allowing bum-boat fishers to cure, viz., that of their divulg- 

 ing the professional secret of curage in the ports of Great 

 Britain, and Yarmouth especially, which they used to visit, 

 was indeed altogether visionary. Keeled busses as well as 

 bum-boats were in the habit of holding communication 

 with the British shore ; and the danger of the former's 

 crews promulgating abroad the mysteries of Dutch curage 

 was much the greater. Bum-boats from the coast were all 

 manned exclusively by Dutchmen ; whereas the greater 



