544 THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 



as a recruiting-school for the navy, &c. &c., was passionately 

 urged ; and the two main points to be established, viz., the 

 possibility of upholding the business by maintaining 

 bounties and laws, and the certainty of destroying it by 

 repealing both, were taken for granted without examina- 

 tion. The nation was used to such demonstration. Out- 

 cries of a similar nature had been raised in succession 

 against each of the several reforms by which, since the 

 Belgian revolution of 1830, Free Trade had gradually been 

 established as a standard principle in Dutch economical 

 policy. There had been a majority, both in and out of 

 Parliament, to back those several measures ; and the evils 

 prophesied as sure to attend them had not been felt. Free 

 Trade at the time was implicitly believed in, and was 

 successful. Wherefore on the public at large, and on 

 Parliament especially, the fishery opposition made little or 

 no impression. 



Nor was Fishery Law Reform entirely stopped during the 

 first part of Mr. van Reenen's administration. The States 

 of the several Provinces, actuated by the several fishery 

 colleges, and subject to Government approbation, were, as 

 has been shown, legislators in most of the detailed fishery 

 rules ; and in this quality they took a share, even before 

 the legislative power of the realm, in the removal of 

 fishery regulations. The rules concerning fresh, or smoke- 

 herring fishery first underwent considerable alteration at 

 the fishers' own request, as preferred by the college for the 

 fresh-herring and coast fishery. The decree relative to the 

 subject, dated December 3ist, 1822, had been repealed in 

 1848, and replaced by two consonant statutes for the 

 Provinces of North and South Holland, into which the 

 former province of Holland had been divided in 1840 ; but 

 as regards their principal contents, these two enactments 



