558 THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 



and sometimes bad. Much capital had of late been lost 

 in the business ; and the state of suspense in which it had 

 been kept between 1850 and 1857, when bounties were 

 gradually withdrawn and uncertainty prevailed as to future 

 fishing liberty, had especially done much to reduce it, and 

 scare fresh capital away. Extensive markets, such as 

 those of Northern Germany, Hamburg, Bremen, and 

 Stettin, which in former centuries were supplied by Dutch 

 brand-herring exclusively, were now entirely lost ; and 

 customs tariffs in some countries thwarted an extension of 

 exports, while Scotch herring was prevalent everywhere, 

 and very far ahead in the race. The commercial treaty 

 with Belgium expired on January ist, 1858 ; and the severe 

 prejudice caused to Dutch fisheries by the elevation of 

 tariffs attendant upon the event was by no means counter- 

 balanced by the abolition of differential duties against 

 importation of Dutch fish in Russia, which took place in 

 the next year. But the greatest enemies of Dutch herring 

 in the markets abroad, it must be owned, were Dutch 

 dealers. Prices of good Dutch brand-herring were then 

 still as a rule above those of Scotch ; and no sooner was 

 importation of herring permitted than some Dutch dealers 

 hastened to import Scotch herring of anything but the 

 best quality, and export it repacked, not under the new 

 Dutch crown-brand, but in old barrels marked with the 

 abolished brand, consisting of the figure of a lion. The 

 fraud was generally detected too late by foreign buyers, 

 because the change in the brand had not been efficiently 

 brought to the knowledge of dealers abroad ; and when 

 detected and reported on it could not be punished, because 

 it had been omitted to enact penalties against the use of 

 abolished brands. Thus the liberty to forego assay was at 

 first misapplied for purposes of delusion, and the perpetrators 



