Two other arguments were very commonly put forward,--that the development of the fisheries would directly increase shipping, and also give birth to many other industries. Ingenious and detailed calculations were made to show that if 20 busses were built at a seaport they would cause other 80 ships to be constructed, increase the number of mariners by 1000, and give employment to nearly 8000 people by sea and land. “It is the fish taken upon his Majesty’s coasts,” said Sir William Monson, the Admiral of the Narrow Sea, “that is the only cause of the increase of shipping in Europe; and he that hath the trade of fishing becomes mightier than all the world besides in number of ships.”[259] Dutch ships crowded our ports; they carried away English commodities at lower freights than English vessels could afford to do, and thus we were “eaten out of all trade and the bread taken out of our mouths in our own seas, and the great customs carried from his Majesty’s coffers to foreign princes and states.” The Hollanders were accused of trying “to get the whole trade of Christendom into their own hands, as well for transportation as otherwise for the command and mastery of the seas.” Yet the king was “Lord Paramount of those seas” in which the foreigners caught the fish that made them so rich and powerful: surely “he would not, without question, allow strangers to eat up the food that was provided for his children!”[260] Such was the national spirit and sentiment that had been developing during the closing years of Elizabeth’s reign and the early part of the reign of James, and was well expressed by Sir Walter Raleigh when he said that “whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself.”[261] England was to become powerful and rich by shipping and maritime commerce, and the first step in the struggle was to secure the fisheries for herself. Opinions varied as to how this was to be accomplished. Some recommended the establishing of a national fishery on the plan recommended by Hitchcock in the preceding generation and tried by Charles I. in the next. Others suggested the institution of a commission of “State Merchant,” which would have trade and commerce as well as fisheries under its charge. A few spoke, more faintly, of the potency of fish-days and the strict observance of Lent. But all or almost all agreed that foreigners, and in particular the Hollanders, should be either prohibited from fishing in the British seas or allowed to do so only under license and regulations and the payment of a tribute to the crown.