THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 483 



busses' sailing day (June 24th), and some herring shipowners 

 were, at their request, appointed by the representatives of 

 Holland to arrange matters, under the title of a " Provisional 

 Committee for the Direction of the Grand Fishery." 



Besides taking the necessary steps towards the timely 

 sailing of the fleet, this provisional Board tried to make out 

 the financial status of the ancient college's administration. 

 They found this an arduous task ; for the college's accounts 

 were scarcely in a creditable condition. Their secretary 

 was dead ; their chief clerk declined to give up the more 

 important papers to the new committee ; and the latter, 

 in such accounts as were delivered up to them, found many 

 instances of maladministration. Considerable sums had 

 been spent in banquets, the inevitable appendix of every 

 meeting of a Dutch Government Board in former times. 

 Herrings for the customary presents to certain authorities 

 had been bought from some privileged shipowners at the 

 very highest prices ; the towns of the south quarter 

 represented in the college had rendered no accounts, and 

 their " buss conveyer," or " hospital ship," to equip which 

 was one of the college's principal duties, had been taken by 

 the French two years before, and not replaced. Commis- 

 sioners from the " Committees of Public Welfare, Marine 

 and Finance," had to intervene in order to make the 

 refractory college clerk give up such part of his books as 

 he had chosen to secrete. In a word, it was shown that 

 the college's administration had latterly been anything 

 but an exception to the general rottenness and mass of 

 abuses prevalent in the old Republic's later years.* 



Sea fisheries were scarcely then in a better condition 

 than the books of their administrators. The war with 

 France in 1794 had forced part of the herring fleet to 

 * Vervolg op Wagenaar, vol. xxxiv. p. 138 sqq. 



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