THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 507 



exclusion as the main cause of their trade's insignificance, 

 and took occasion from the general revision of the fishery 

 statutes ordained in 1818 to strenuously claim the right to 

 cure their herring. Their petition,* besides the arguments 

 used by their fathers in I75i,fhad now some still more 

 stringent reasons as a base. Under the French Government 

 in 1812 and 1813, fishermen from the Side were allowed 

 to cure ; and as they of the Grand Fishery could not venture 

 into their ordinary fishing waters, herring caught and cured 

 by the despised bum-boats closer to the continental shore 

 was carried to Maassluis and Vlaardingen, and those towns 

 were then anxious enough to export it under the Grand 

 Fishery brand. 



The petition from the coast villages (viz., Scheveningen, 

 Katwijk, Noordwijk, Egmond aan Zee and Zantvoort, the 

 rest having meanwhile given up fishing), was this time 

 echoed higher up than its predecessor in 1751 had been. 

 Four sections out of the five into which the Second Chamber, 

 or Lower House of the legislative body, was then divided 

 for the preliminary examination of Bills brought in, desired 

 more ample elucidation respecting the curing monopoly.! 

 Government answered them with assertions either un- 

 founded or not to the point. Firstly, it was said, the early 

 herring which really constitutes the renown of the Dutch 

 brands abroad is caught off the Shetlands, whither no keel- 

 less boat can sail ; a statement in flat contradiction to 

 the representations of the coast fishermen, who in their 

 petition alleged the early herring caught off Shetland to be, 



* Published as Appendix XIX. to the Report of the Committee on 

 Sea-Fisheries, 1854. 



t See part ii. 



\ See the Report of the Central Section, in Byvoegsel tot het 

 Staatsblad, 1818, p. 1006. 



