386 THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 



instance on record of the Stettiners having acceded to 

 the invitation ; but in 1727 they again found reason to 

 complain of Dutch herring being bad.* It would 

 not be worth while to mention such incidents as these, 

 if they did not stand as curious samples of the Dutch 

 legislator's candid belief, against all evidence to the 

 contrary, that his work was perfect and could not but be 

 ! admired and seconded by all who had dealings with the 

 Grand Fishery's produce. 



While Holland tried, by such means as these, to 

 maintain some of her herring fishery's ancient splendour, 

 foreign competition rose and prospered in proportion to its 

 decline. It will be superfluous in this place to digress upon 

 the rise in the business in Great Britain at the time.| 

 Nor was Great Britain the only concurrent. In 1727, a 

 privileged fishing company was chartered at Nieuwpoort, 

 in the Austrian Netherlands, against whose competition 

 measures had accordingly to be taken. These measures 

 were once more based on the customary belief that the 

 existing system, if thoroughly enforced, sufficed to put 

 foreign competition down. Instead of taking steps to 

 place the Dutch on an equal footing with them, the Herring 

 College, fully convinced that without Dutch sailors a 

 foreign society could do nothing, sued for and obtained a 

 renovation, by the States General, of the prohibitions 

 against taking service on board a foreign fishing vessel, and 

 the penalties against breach of this law were aggravated by 

 the semi-barbarous enactment that the families of such 

 fishermen as should be abroad in foreign service should be 

 removed from their dwelling-places and be entitled to no 



* Res. Holl. 1727, p. 5. 

 f Europische Mercurius, 1720, i. p. 279. 



