OYSTER CULTURE IN ENGLAND. 473 



of the Memorialists endeavoured to show that the boats, 

 which were put on after my inquiry was announced, would 

 not have been put on but for my inquiry. Whatever 

 grounds there may be for such an inference, I think it fair 

 to assume, for my present purposes, that the boats were 

 put on, not in consequence of my inquiry, but in conse- 

 quence of the assistance which Mr. Davies is rendering to 

 the Company. 



Is there, then, anything in the assistance which Mr. 

 Davies is rendering to the Company which should induce 

 the Board of Trade to refrain from issuing the certificate 

 which otherwise it could hardly avoid issuing, that the 

 Company i? not properly cultivating the grounds ? 



If I have succeeded in stating the foregoing facts 

 clearly, the Board of Trade itself will be quite as able as I 

 am to answer that question ; and it is only because the 

 Board will probably expect me to indicate my own opinion 

 that I venture to state the grounds on which the answer to 

 the foregoing question should, in my judgment, be based. 

 In the first place, it seems to me that nothing but the 

 clearest prospects of promoting the public advantage can, 

 as a general rule, justify the depriving of public fishermen 

 of the rights of fishing which they enjoy in the territorial 

 waters of the kingdom. I do not wish to put the matter 

 in a sensational or rhetorical form ; but it is the bare fact, 

 which ought to be borne in mind, that those rights were 

 secured to their ancestors and themselves more than six 

 centuries ago, by a provision of the Great Charter, and 

 that every appropriation of a fishery repeals to the extent 

 of the appropriation a provision of Magna Charta. 



In the next place, it seems equally clear to me that 

 the Legislature, if its opinion may be inferred from the 

 preamble, as well as from the provisions of the 3 znd sec- 



