THE SALMON AND CHANNEL FISHERIES. 1 61 



moved to set the rule nisi aside, Lord Ellenborough 

 expressed himself as follows : " It is impossible to 

 xc sustain this verdict. The right set up by the 

 ' defendant to have a stone weir is plainly founded 

 1 upon encroachment. The erection of weirs 

 ' across rivers was reprobated in the earliest 

 ' periods of our law. They were considered as 



* public nuisances. The words of Magna Charta 

 ' are, 'that all weirs from henceforth shall be 

 ' * utterly pulled down by Thames and Medway, 

 4 ' and through all England;' and this was followed 



* up by subsequent acts, treating them as public 



* nuisances, forbidding the erection of new ones, 

 1 and the enhancing, straitening, or enlarging of 

 £ those which had aforetime existed. I remem- 

 ' ber that the stells erected in the river Eden by 

 « the late Lord Lonsdale and the Corporation of 

 c Carlisle, whereby all the fish were stopped in 

 ' their passage up the river, were pronounced in 

 1 this court, upon a motion for a new trial, to he 

 ' illegal, and a public nuisance. Now here it ap- 

 ' pears, that, previous to the erection of this com- 

 ' plete stone weir, there had always been an 

 4 escape for the fish through and over the old 



* brush- wood weir, in which- those in the stream 



* above had a right ; and it was not competent for 

 1 the defendant to debar them of it by making an 



* impervious wall of stone through which the fish 

 « could not insinuate themselves, as. it is well 



* known they will through a brush-wood weir, and 



M 



