528 THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 



prohibition from importing any herring caught by foreigners, 

 or by Customs duties amounting to such a prohibition. 



All sea-fisheries, including, besides those just named, 

 those of whale, cod, flounder, plaice, &c., were encouraged 

 by bounties more or less considerable. 



It will be noticed that this system, whatever its faults, 

 was in its kind a well-ordained and finished organization. 

 Its main parts completed each other so that no single stone 

 of the building could be removed without endangering the 

 whole. The curing monopoly of the Grand Fishery, and 

 the smoking monopoly of the coast fishery, made the 

 prohibition from importing herring an absolute necessity, it 

 being impossible to let foreigners import articles which 

 some or most natives were forbidden to produce. Again, 

 the importing prohibition necessitated obligatory assay of 

 brand-herring ; for it would have been impossible to 

 prevent foreign cured-herring from being imported if 

 Dutch fishermen had bought it at sea, which they would 

 have done, in spite of the legal prohibition, if obligatory 

 assays at home had not made detection highly probable. 

 Next, Dutch fisheries being thus prevented, by a complete 

 set of legislative trammels, from following their natural 

 course of development and effectually facing the over- 

 whelming competition of English, Germans, and Norsemen, 

 they could not of course go without direct government 

 assistance, and would have altogether ceased to exist if 

 their losses had not been covered by premiums. 



Finally, as the whole of the system was pointed towards 

 the main object of maintaining Dutch cured-herring as a fine 

 and expensive delicacy, and as this object was still aimed at 

 when the delicacy ceased to be in great demand abroad, 

 there could of course be but one chance of selling Dutch 

 herring at high figures, and that chance lay in restricting 



