394 THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 



each buss was asked for, besides a bounty on exportation 

 of herring at fl. I per ton, and a recommendation ex officio, 

 that the inhabitants of all poor-houses, and similar estab- 

 lishments, should be fed on herring at least twice a week. 

 The College of the Grand Fishery examined the request, 

 and of course seconded it, " because the business could not 

 be kept going without notable assistance." The College 

 besides reminded the States that, having in 1748 refused a 

 proffered subsidy when not required, they were entitled to 

 it now they could not do without it. They omitted to 

 state that the subsidy rejected in 1748, had been formerly 

 accepted readily enough whenever there was occasion for 

 it, and that the said subsidy was widely different from the 

 premium now sued for ; the former being a grant to the 

 central direction of the fisheries to meet convoying expenses, 

 and the latter a direct payment to each skipper out of the 

 provincial treasury, to be obtained in full peace, and upon 

 no other consideration than the fact of his having sailed for 

 herring. The States of Holland, however, granted the new 

 bounty by Placard of May iQth, 1775.* Upon mature 

 consideration, related in the intolerably tedious style 

 of the period, they allowed fl.5OO to the proprietor 

 of each herring ship which should sail in the course 

 of the next two years. The other measures sued for, 

 viz., the exportation bounty and the order to the poor- 

 house boards to feed their poor on herring, were both 

 declined. 



It was expected that in the course of the two years for 

 which the bounty had been allowed, the herring trade, thus 

 encouraged, should beat foreign competition out of the field 

 and regain its former greatness. And as a fact, now they 

 were sure of a bounty, the number of busses increased 



* * Res. Holl. 421, 464. Groot Ptacaetboek ix. 1303. 



