pounds; the outfit, then, and the merchants' profit, must be paid by the
government: and it is accordingly on this idea, that the British bounty
is calculated. From the poverty of this business, then, it has happened,
that the nations who have taken it up have successively abandoned it.
The Basques began it: but though the most economical and enterprising of
the inhabitants of France, they could not continue it; and it is said,
they never employed more than thirty ships a year. The Dutch and Hanse
towns succeeded them. The latter gave it up long ago. The English
carried it on, in competition with the Dutch, during the last and
beginning of the present century: but it was too little profitable for
them, in comparison with other branches of commerce open to them.

In the mean time, the inhabitants of the barren island of Nantucket had
taken up this fishery, invited to it by the whales presenting themselves
on their own shore. To them, therefore, the English relinquished it,
continuing to them, as British subjects, the importation of their oils
into England, duty free, while foreigners were subject to a duty of
eighteen pounds five shillings sterling a ton. The Dutch were enabled
to continue it long, because, 1. They are so near the northern fishing
grounds, that a vessel begins her fishing very soon after she is out
of port. 2. They navigate with more economy than the other nations of
Europe. 3. Their seamen are content with lower wages: and, 4. Their
merchants, with a lower profit on their capital. Under all these
favorable circumstances, however, this branch of business, after long
languishing, is at length nearly extinct with them. It is said, they did
not send above half a dozen ships in pursuit of the whale this present
year. The _Nantuckois_, then, were the only people who exercised
this fishery to any extent at the commencement of the late war. Their
country, from its barrenness yielding no subsistence, they were obliged
to seek it in the sea which surrounded them. Their economy was more
rigorous than that of the Dutch. Their seamen, instead of wages, had a
share in what was taken: this induced them to fish with fewer hands,
so that each had a greater dividend in the profit; it made them more
vigilant in seeking game, bolder in pursuing it, and parsimonious in all
their expenses. London was their only market. When, therefore, by
the late revolution, they became aliens in Great Britain, they became
subject to the ali