546 THE HISTORY. OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 



1818,* to grant dispensations from the said monopoly. It 

 will be remembered that the said royal qualification had 

 contributed to make the law of 1818 acceptable to such 

 members of Parliament as then objected to monopolies 

 as a principle. It was now used for the first time, at a 

 moment when the repeal of the law itself was looked for 

 on all hands, and in immediate perspective. 



On September 29th, 1854, or exactly a fortnight after 

 the momentous date on which the curing monopoly 

 was thus broken into, the Royal Committee appointed in 

 February of the same year laid their Report before the 

 Home Department. If any doubt remained in an unpre- 

 judiced mind as to the propriety of doing away with the 

 whole of the sea-fishery laws, this very remarkable docu- 

 ment was sufficient to dispel it. It was the result of an 

 inquiry at once thorough, impartial, and dispassionate ; and 

 it laid before the public, in a clear and terse resumption, 

 the whole outlines of the sea-fishery system, its faults, and 

 its effects. The Committee's members, four in number, had 

 been selected out of the Permanent Committees of the 

 Provincial States (Gedeputeerde Staten) of South and 

 North Holland ; they had, therefore, had ample occasion in 

 the fulfilment of their daily official duties to acquire well- 

 founded views on sea-fishery questions. Their secretary, 

 now Professor Buys, has since achieved an eminent career 

 in science and political literature. The report was hence- 

 forward the elementary handbook for any one desirous to 

 form an opinion in sea-fishery matters. The public at 

 large, as has been said, was then strongly disposed against 

 Protection ; but it is more than probable that most were 

 unacquainted with the exact bearings of the case for and 



* Appendix D. 



