THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 141 



and fresh fish business. Extensive correspondence was 

 carried on between the Dutch Ambassadors at Brussels 

 and their principals at the Hague, in the earlier years of 

 the 1 8th century, on the subject of duties on salt-cod, and 

 fresh fish of several descriptions ; but all efforts to obtain 

 the removal of these duties were in vain, and the decay of 

 the Iceland cod-fishery in Holland appears to have taken 

 its origin from protective duties in the Austrian Nether- 

 lands and France. Difficulties with Denmark, the nature of 

 which I shall expose in another chapter,* were also particu- 

 larly prejudicial to the Iceland cod-fishery in 1740 and the 

 next years ; and the first Dutch vessels confiscated by 

 Denmark were not whalers, but cod-hookers from the Maas. 

 The actual effect of the differences with Denmark upon 

 the Iceland cod-fishery cannot be traced, as no statistics 

 of the trade are extant earlier than 1751, from which 

 year they have been annually noted down in the ' Neder- 

 landsche Jaarboeken," and collected into a table by the 

 Committee on Sea-fisheries, 1854, from whose Report 

 Appendix C to these pages has been derived. The striking 

 ups and downs of the trade, as shown by this table, may 

 frequently be accounted for by vessels being transferred 

 from the herring fishery to the Iceland business, and vice 

 versa, as the state of the cured-herring and cod markets 

 made such shiftings desirable. I should be at a loss, for 

 instance, to find another reason why the number of vessels 

 sailed to Iceland was 95 in 1756, and in in the next year, 

 although the fishing returns of the former were miserable. 

 A knowledge of fish-prices throughout the Republic's 

 existence would be necessary to acquire a full understanding 

 of this, as of other phenomena in the fisheries' history ; and 



* See Chapter v. 



