240 APPENDIX. 



began to improve, and the style of fishing began to 

 pay well, fixed nets, hitherto but little known on the 

 Irish coasts, began to make their appearance. The more 

 the fisheries improved the more these nets increased, and 

 to such a degree that the rivers are beginning to suffer 

 very severely. Small rivers are entirely extinguished by 

 them, larger ones do not pay the up-stream proprietors for 

 looking after them; and poaching can never he suppressed, 

 if the up-stream proprietors do not strenuously set their faces 

 against it. The fisheries in Ireland in the last three years 

 show a considerable diminution rather than an increase, 

 and this diminution cannot but go on increasing. 



The system is manifestly ruinous, unfair, and illegal. 1 

 Suppose I own a river fifty miles long, I incur a great 

 expense and a vast amount of trouble to get up a stock of 

 salmon. The salmon go down to the sea, and some fellow 

 who has hired fifty yards of seabeach runs out a fixed net 

 half-a-mile long, and catches nearly every one of my 

 fish. I have spent money and trouble for nothing ; the 

 stranger has ruined my river and destroyed all the salmon ; 

 and finding that it does not pay to fish his net longer, 

 he takes it up and goes elsewhere to repeat his destruction. 

 This is, actually and literally, what has been and is occur- 

 ring in Ireland. 



1 Fixed nets and stake -weirs have been declared illegal by three 

 judges, two concurring with Baron Pennefather in that judgment. 

 Most of the estuary fisheries of Ireland are held by the public by a 

 common-law right, and no one has therefore any right to obstruct 

 or do away with any part of that right ; nor can any act of par- 

 liament confer such a right. This judgment has been confirmed on 

 several occasions. 



