BOHUSLAJf HERRING-FISHERIES. 233 



iu the case of the Danes and iSTorwegiaus. Foreigners who intended to 

 become Swedish citizens were for three years freed from all personal 

 taxes and enjoyed the same privileges as the natives. The government 

 asked no tax for the privilege of participating in the fisheries, but even 

 paid a subsidy for furnishing large seines, and also in other ways en- 

 couraged the fishing-trade. The government also endeavored to ckaw 

 people to the coast to engage in fishing by giving them free building- 

 lots, lumber from the royal forests, freedom from military service, &c. 

 From 1756 till 1787 the government even permitted Swedish subjects 

 who had fled from Sweden on account of minor offences to return with- 

 out being punished if they would settle on the coast and engage in fish- 

 ing. In 1705 a decree was published permitting i^eople who lived in the 

 most distant provinces on the Gulf of Bothnia to go to Bohusliin by sea 

 free of expense if they would engage in the herring-fisheries. The num- 

 ber of those who came to the coast of Bohusliin every year during the 

 fishing-season in order to be employed in fishing or in the preparation 

 of fish for the trade was, during the most flourishing period, estimated 

 at 50,000, not counting in the stationary population of the coast.^* 



Besides holding out inducements for people to engage in fishing, en- 

 deavors were also made to further the fishing-interests by improved and 

 more complete laws, for which purpose diuing the period 1767-1772 a 

 special parliamentary "fishing-commission" was appointed to which all 

 questions concerning fishery-legislation were referred. During the pe- 

 riod 1774-1778 special reports on the subject were ordered by the gov- 

 ernment. The result of the work of the 'aljove-mentioned commission 

 was a general fishery-law, which, for the time when it originated, must 

 be considered as possessing considerable merit, and a special law for the 

 Xorth Sea fisheries, which afterwards also included our herring-fisheries. 

 In the former law, which in all essential points is the same as our pres- 

 ent fishery-law of the 29th of June, 1852, the privilege of fishing on the 

 inner coast was limited to the proprietors of the coast,^^ which rule in 



'■'^SeeS. NUsson, ^'Haudlinfjar rorande Silljl-skct i Bohusldnska Sldrydrde)!" [The her- 

 ring-fisheries on the coast of Bohusliin]. Stockholm, 1843, p. 11. 



*"^ In those places where persons having the privilege of fishing had been in the habit 

 of catching fish on "each others' coast," everything should remain iu statu, quo, and 

 such fisheries should be in common to all jiroprietors of a certain extent of coast, a 

 regulation which rightly understood might prove very useful. (See "Nya liandlingar 

 rorande Sillfisket i Bohusldnska Skdrfjdrden," I. Gottenburg, 1874. Appendix, p. 1.5-16, 

 § 12.) The granting of the exclusive privilege of fishing to the owners of the coast 

 was likewise done with the view of promoting the fishing-interests, as it was thought 

 that they would be in the hands of those who for their own advantage would carry on 

 fishing in the most approved manner. It was moreover only the logical development 

 of those principles of law which gradually had obtained in Sweden as well as iu other 

 Germanic countries. It is an error to suppose that the general fishing-law of 1766, as 

 well as its explanation published in 1771 regarding the western coast of Sweden be- 

 tween the Sound and the Norwegian frontier, had been entirely abrogated by the law 

 of 1774 ' ' for the North Sea fisheries and the salting-houses in the districts of Gotten- 

 burg and Bohuslan"; for this was certainly not the intention. Such a change would 

 have required a resolution of Parliament sanctioned by the king. (See ^§2, 40, 42 of 

 the constitution of 1772.) 



