as it were, a law of its nature.  But, at this low price, the whale-fishery is the poorest business into which a merchant or sailor can enter.  If the sailor, instead of wages, has a part of what is taken, he finds that this, one year with another, yields him less than he could have got as wages in any other business.  It is attended, too, with great risk, singular hardships, and long absence from his family, if the voyage is made solely at the expense of the merchant, he finds that, one year with another, it does not reimburse him his expense.  As for example; an English ship of three hundred tons and forty-two hands brings home, communibus annis, after four months’ voyage, twenty-five tons of oil, worth four hundred and thirty-seven pounds ten shillings sterling.  But the wages of the officers and seamen will be four hundred 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