PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM 
A.D. 1689 and allowances were made to support the operations of the 
~75% Company, but it never answered the expectations of the pro- 
moters, and it called out the scathing criticism of Adam Smith. 
Another trade in which the Dutch maintained their 
supremacy and from which they had ousted the English, in 
the time of James I, was the Greenland whale fishery. To 
recover it, a joint-stock Company was formed in 1692, which 
was subsequently permitted to import whale-oil duty-free? 
In the course of a very few years, however, they ran through 
their capital of £82,000, and the trade was abandoned, 
till the South Sea Company endeavoured to re-open it; but 
they prosecuted it without success. From this time onwards, 
however, the business was left to the enterprise of private 
individuals, though Parliament paid large sums with the 
view of fostering it. In 1733 a bounty of 20s. per ton on 
vessels engaged in the business was offered, in 1740 it was 
raised to 80s., and in 1749 it was raised to 40s. This large 
bounty was successful in stimulating the trade, but though 
it was continued for many years it did not serve to make it 
prosper. In 1755 mo less than £55,000 was paid for this 
purpose, but in 1770 the tonnage employed had so far declined 
that the bounties had fallen to £34,800. Arthur Young, who 
wrote in 1768, did not notice any signs of decay, and thought 
the merchants at Hull deserved “much commendation for 
entering into a business so extremely expensive, hazardous, 
and so often disadvantageous®.” The alleged justification 
for this continued expenditure, in attracting English capital 
to a direction in which it did not find profitable employment, 
was of course political ; it was supposed that we could in this 
way furnish ourselves with whale-oil on easier terms than by 
buying it from foreign and more successful fishermen, and 
this had been the underlying motive from the first. 
A similar expedient was tried with regard to the con- 
0 Ship struction of large vessels. Bounties had occasionally been 
building, given on the building of big ships’. and this mode of 
ȴ 
i4W.and M. c. 17. 
2 7and 8 W. III. c. 33. For an account of the Iceland trade from Broadstairs, 
see Pennant, Journey from London to the Isle of Wight, 1. 112. 
3 Northern Tour, 1. 158. 
' Macpherson. 1x. 563: m1. 179. 25 C. Il. c. 7. $ Vol. 1. p. 413,