40 



REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



have already imported to London upwards of 40 Ton of Whale Finn: 

 being the produce of the two first years. That upon Eutring of the 

 above Finn, a Duty was required and paid upon it, of thirty one Pound 

 ten shillings 4P' Ton. That the weight of this Duty was reuder'd much 

 heavier by the great reduction made in the price of Dutch Bone since 

 the commencement of this Trade from £500 to £330 ^ Ton." They rep- 

 resent further that the reason for the conferring of bounties upon ves- 

 sels in this pursuit from Great Britain was to rival the Dutch,* but in 

 spite of this encouragement there was not enough oil and bone brought 

 into England by British vessels to supply the demand. They also rea- 

 soned that Parliament could not intentionally discriminate between the 

 various subjects of the Crown, granting to one a bounty and requiring of 

 another a duty for the same service. They however ask for no bounty — 

 they are content that Great Britain should alone receive the benefit of 

 that — but they simply desire that they should not be taxed with a duty 

 on these imports.! ; 



The knowledge that the English fishery, even with its bounty, was 

 still unable to fully cope with the Dutch, or even to supply its own 

 home demaud, as well as the desire of Earl Grenville to forward certain 

 projects in his American policy, notably the odious stamp -taj?, caused 

 some attention to be paid to petitions similar to the foregoing, fortified 

 somewhat by the presence of a special agent from Massachusetts to sus- 

 tain the position and urge the claims there made. To various sections 

 various tenders were to be made. "The boon that was to mollify New 

 England," says Bancroft^ •' was concerted with Israel INlaudit, acting 

 for his brother, the agent of Massachusetts, and was nothing less thau 

 the whale-fishery. Great Britain had sought to compete with the Dutch 



* The Dutch from 1759 to 1768 seut to the Gl•eeuh^nd fishery 1,324 ships, which took 

 3,018 whales, producing 146,419 barrels of oil and 6,785,140 pounds of bone. (Scousby.) 

 Great Britain in the same time sent about one-third the number of ships. 



t Mass. Col. MSS., Maritime, vol. vii, p. 243. The concluding portion of this peti- 

 tion, including the signatures, is missing, a fact greatly to be regretted, as it would be 

 extremely interesting to know who the prou;iueu t oil-merchants of that time were. 

 The following is the statement of imports of oil and bone from the colonies into Eng- 

 land and from Holland to the same country, which accompanied the petition : 



Account of Finns ^ Oil from America to England 4' Duties from Christmas 1758 to 



Christmas 1763. 



t Bancroft's United States, v, p. 184. 



