502 THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 



CHAPTER II. 



PROTECTION AT A CULMINATING POINT. 



ON November 3Oth, 1813, the Prince of Orange crossed 

 from England to take the hereditary government of the ex- 

 Batavian Republic. On December 1st, he was proclaimed 

 Sovereign Prince of the Netherlands at Amsterdam ; and 

 one of his very first acts of economical legislation was to 

 cancel all fishery laws of French origin and re-instate the 

 herring law of 1801.* 



The old system of fishery regulation and protection was 

 further rebuilt in the next years. Premiums were held out 

 to encourage a fresh beginning of the several fisheries, to 

 the amount of fl.5oo for every cure-herring buss equipped, 

 for every vessel employed on cod-fishery in the North Sea 

 during the winter months, and for every voyage made by a 

 vessel in the Iceland cod-fishery ; of fl.2oo for a fresh herring 

 bum-boat, and fl.4OOO for each of the first twelve whalers 

 to sail in the next years, besides, as regards the latter, the 

 "indemnification bounty" of fl.5O for each quarter of train 

 wanting to a hundred, under the same conditions as to 

 equipment, strength of crew, and duration of voyage, which 

 had been enacted in 1788 and i8o2.f In virtue of the 

 latter premium, a whaler was entitled, if returning " clean," 

 i.e. without any cargo, to no less a sum than fl.QOOO as a 

 bounty. The permission to send a few sale-hunters direct 

 from the fleet to Germany, was also granted once more in 



* Decree of January loth, 1814 (Staatsbl. No. 6). 

 f Staatsblad 1815, Nos. 2, 27; 1816, No. 6 ; 1817, No. 3; 1818 

 Nos. 13, 42, 43. Bijvoegsel op het Staatsblad, 1818, p. 892. 



