CHAPTER VII. 
CHARLES II.; THE ROYAL FISHERY. 
Cuarzes II., so far as the scheme of a national fishery 
was concerned, was now in a position identical in almost 
every respect with that in which his father had found himself 
in 1630. The Dutch, in spite of heavy losses sustained during 
the naval war of the Commonwealth period, still main- 
tained their powerful fishing fleet in the North Sea, the 
British fishing industry, compared with that of these hereditary 
rivals, remaining small and insignificant. These facts 
were well-known to the people at large, many of whom felt, 
as the men of the preceding generation had done, that the 
long continuance of such a state of affairs amounted to a 
national disgrace. To complete the parallel, there was 
the same crowd of pamphleteers, bent on arousing the mass 
of the British people from the state of lethargy in which 
they lay, by graphic accounts of the wealth derived by the 
Dutch from their fisheries, and of the ease with which the 
British, if they cared, might also build up a national fishery 
which would, in similar fashion, render them rich and 
powerful among the nations of Europe. Charles IT. again, 
like his father, was inclined to believe that there was much 
truth in what these writers said; he was statesman enough 
to perceive that the future of Britain was bound up in her 
reaping to the full those advantages naturally given by her 
insular position, and thought, with the pamphleteers, 
that the development of a national fishery, since it must in- 
G 
