1 88 THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 



return into port as early as the first days of July ; and in 

 September the French had taken the whole of the cod 

 fishing fleet* To apply for pecuniary aid was therefore 

 one of the first acts of the new committee ; and the several 

 immunities previously granted to the herring fishery were 

 accordingly continued by the government of the new 

 Republic. As for subsidies, the committee in I795refrained 

 from applying for them, in consideration of the exhausted 

 state of the country's exchequer ; but at the same time 

 directed the attention of Government towards the expedi- 

 ency of ulteriorly granting the Grand Fishery the same aid 

 which they had enjoyed under the defunct Republic. \ But 

 there was little occasion for subsidy in the next years, as 

 the protracted war with England, which at one time 

 nearly swept the Dutch colours away from the face of the 

 seas, stopped all or most fishing expeditions. The main 

 feature of this history in the years between the overthrow 

 of the Republic of the United Netherlands and the restora- 

 tion of 1813 is, that there was some legislation, but very 

 little fishery. Sailors and vessels belonging to the latter 

 were often pressed into the country's service ; and a 

 publication against resisting such requisitions had to be 

 issued by the Executive Board on July 4th, 1798. A 

 re-organisation of the committee for the Grand Fishery 

 took place on November 2Oth of the same year, but as yet 

 only the title of Provisional Committee was given them, 

 and there is no evidence of the extent of their business 

 transactions having warranted another name. Their only 

 act in the last two years of the century is indicative of the 

 very depressed condition, if not the utter stand-still, of the 



* Nieuwe Jaarboeken, a 1794, p. 1218; Gevers, de magno sive 

 halecum piscatu, p. 61 sqq. 



f Gevers, de magno sive halecum piscatu, p. 63. 



