1 84 THE RELATIONS OF THE STATE WITH 



The first direct encouragement given to the northern 

 fisheries was the grant to the " Greenland Company " in 

 1693 of a sort of monopoly of the trade with Greenland, 

 and of the fisheries in the adjacent seas. This com- 

 pany, however, failed to fulfil its mission, and ten years 

 later the privileges conferred upon it were thrown open to 

 all British subjects. These were gradually increased until 

 not only was the produce of these fisheries admitted free of 

 duty, but bounties were paid to vessels fitting out for the 

 trade, and bounties were paid on the oil, whalebone, and 

 sealskins, which they brought home. Acts were passed 

 prescribing the exact limits within which the whales were 

 to be caught which were entitled to the bounty, but, as the 

 officers of the Government were neither ubiquitous nor 

 omniscient, they had to depend on the oath of the master 

 of the ship whether the oil he brought home was the 

 produce of a whale caught north of 64^ N. latitude, 

 or south of 36 S. latitude. It is to be feared that whaling 

 captains and their crews were not proof against the tempta- 

 tion of asserting what no one in the world could disprove, 

 and that the bounty system was the cause of a considerable 

 amount of uncommonly hard swearing, and opened the 

 door to a good many fraudulent claims on the national 

 purse. They certainly entailed a vast amount of trouble on 

 the tax-collectors, who had to make all sorts of allowances 

 on salt used, or intended to be used, in or brought back 

 from the fisheries ; and there is evidence that they were a 

 considerable burden to the country, for in an Act passed in 

 1785 there is a clause tempting those to whom sums of 

 money, payable as bounties, were overdue, to exercise " for- 

 bearance " in pressing their claims, by offering them 3 per 

 cent, interest on such unpaid bounties. The effect the 

 export bounties had in reducing the supply of fish to the 

 English markets has already been referred to. 



