460 THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 



in basketfuls, and that in 1665, some skippers of the same 

 town landed eight hundred lasts, or eight millions of 

 herrings in one month.* 



CHAPTER V. 



"DOMINIUM MARLS." 



THE right to fish all over the open sea has always been 

 to the Dutch Republic a matter of importance proportioned 

 to that of her sea-fisheries. This right is now universally 

 acknowledged to belong to all and sundry ; but notions on 

 international law were different some centuries ago, when 

 the Sovereignty of the seas, or of some portion of them, 

 was claimed by more nations than one. The Netherlands 

 never set up any such claim, and by the number of their 

 merchant and fishing shipping were always very closely 

 interested in debating it, and maintaining the " Mare Libe- 

 rum," theory, the very name of which reminds of its immor- 

 tal Dutch exposer and defender, Hugo Grotius. As all 

 pretensions to " Dominium Maris," were of a nature in the 

 very first place to affect the sea-fisheries' most vital interest, 

 this history, or that period of it which coincides with the 

 international debate on the question, would not be complete 

 without a brief account of the several phases of the quarrel, 

 as carried on between the Netherlands and their two rivals 

 in fishery, Great Britain and Denmark. The disputes with 

 the former power are by far the more important, and have 

 been made the subject of a profound historical investigation 

 by Mr. J. Muller, Fzn., in his important work 'Mare 

 Clausum.'t The compass of these pages of course affords 



* See p. 20 of the Report by the Committee on Sea-fisheries, 1854. 

 f Edited by Fr. Muller, Amsterdam, 1872. 



