108 CHARLES II. 
fall to ruin. In 1670, a pamphlet appeared, entitled The 
Royal Fishing Revived, which contains many interesting 
particulars concerning the state of trade in England at this 
time.1_ The writer acknowledges that the Dutch have posses- 
sion of the fishing trade. The reasons for this he summarises 
thus : They have multitudes of men, cheapness and conven- 
ience for building ships, advantages in barter and exchange, 
and an admitted excellence in packing and curing all kinds 
of fish, with the one exception of red herring. They give 
facilities for trade to all nations and have low customs 
duties. England, on the other hand, suffers from lack of 
population. This he ascribes to the peopling of the American 
plantations, the re-peopling of Ireland after the great 
massacre, the Great Plague of 1665, the law against 
naturalisation, and finally, to the corporations, which 
restrict trade to those who are freemen of them. English 
ships, he affirms further, are dearer than Dutch ships, 
a Dutch ship being built for half the price of an English 
one of equal dimensions. This he attributes first to the 
dearness and scarcity of timber in England, and, secondly, 
to the Act of Navigation, “which not only restraines the 
importation of Timber, Pitch, Tar, Hemp, and Iron, to 
these dear built ships, and the ships of the natives of the 
places from whence they are had, whether they have ships 
or not, but also it gives freedom to the Dutch to import all 
sort of Manufactories made of these Growths, which they 
acquire for half the price the English can; whereby the 
English have wholly lost the Trade for fitting up ships for 
this or any other Trade.” 
The English ship, moreover, the writer says, is not of 
convenient size, a Dutch ship of equal size being manned 
effectively with half the number of hands. This he ascribes 
to the fact that the building is confined to Englishmen, 
1The Royal Pishing Revived: Cal. S.P. Dom. Car. II., vol. 28la, 
No. 244. 
