THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 517 



cheap ; and the Dutch herring laws, instead of pointing out 

 the way to cheap production, were based on the bicen- 

 tennial principle that Dutch cured herring was to be, not 

 an article of daily food, but a delicious, and of course 

 expensive, luxury. The legislation had been built up in a 

 time when the Dutch were, if not the only, at least by very 

 far the greatest herring-fishers of the world, and enabled 

 by the absence of serious competition to put their own 

 prices upon their own brands. Thus the notions of Herring 

 and Monopoly had for centuries been closely interwowen 

 in the Dutchman's mind ; and he was not able to disen- 

 tangle those notions, even when foreigners began to go far 

 ahead of Holland in competition upon the herring markets. 

 Other countries at the same time retaliated on Holland for 

 her former ascendency and present exclusive policy, by 

 closing their markets against Dutch herring by heavy 

 customs duties. This state of things had not been realised 

 in the course of the eighteenth century ; whence the con- 

 tinued downfall of the Dutch herring fisheries, in spite of 

 premiums and regulations without number. It was not 

 realised in the first part of the present century ; whence 

 the impossibility of keeping up competition abroad. Nor 

 could home consumption, being curtailed by prices arti- 

 ficially high, sustain the business even under a prohibition 

 of foreign herring. Herring Protection, more than two 

 centuries old, had been bringing down its own punishment 

 for one century or more ; and yet nobody saw the evi- 

 dent effects of the great social law against which they had 

 been striving in vain. 



As a very conclusive instance of this blindness, the 

 "A msterdamsche Haringreedery" before mentioned in 1828 

 presented a petition to the King, which, though not fully 

 carried out, led to a very masterpiece of monopolising 



