522 THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 



article to regulate itself; whereas Government now pro- 

 ceeded to cap the measure by having the sale monopolised 

 and restricted likewise. The regulation and protection 

 system, as applied to herring fishery, was now screwed up 

 to its very acme. A cure-herring fisherman was not much 

 beyond a machine as regards the management of his 

 business. He was accurately prescribed how, in what 

 vessels, with what nets, when, and where to fish ; how to 

 prepare his fish ; how, when, and in what vessels to convey 

 it home ; and he was obliged to let others decide for him 

 whether, when, and at what prices it was to be sold. He 

 had not the slightest liberty of action ; a knowledge of his 

 business, of prices, markets, &c., was unnecessary for him ; 

 and he would have been fined large sums had he tried to 

 improve his business by any technical innovation. Anybody 

 could, so to say, be a herring shipowner, if he had a know- 

 ledge of the several regulations of which the above chapters 

 contain a brief, and far from detailed, account. It is a 

 marvel that a trade should have lingered so long, in which 

 all vitality and spirit of enterprise was so utterly extin- 

 guished by regulations ; the more so as the avowed object 

 of some of these regulations was, not to extend, but to 

 restrict the business. Of this baleful policy of directly and 

 openly keeping back part of the supply of an article in 

 order to enhance its market price, the history of the 

 Netherlands in former centuries can show more instances 

 than one ; but I doubt whether in the present century 

 there is an example of such a thing applied to food. 



As regards the principle, the Dutch fish monopolies were 

 decidedly worse than the British Corn Laws ; and the rea- 

 son why the latter affected the general welfare much more 

 seriously is merely that they were applied to an article 

 without which no one could do. Nor was the revival of 



