140 THE SALMON. 



with accomplishment, and talking with doing. All sorts 

 of people have got upon their lips a remark of the late 

 Sir Eobert Peel, that he " never knew a session of Par- 

 liament without a salmon bill," and that remark is mider- 

 stood as meaning that Sir Robert had seen in his day a 

 great amount of salmon legislation. It has failed to be 

 observed that he spoke of Bills, not of Acts. If, when 

 remarkino; that he had never known a session without a 

 salmon Bill, he had added that neither had he ever known 

 a session with a salmon Act, he would have come much 

 nearer to conveying an accurate impression of the facts. 

 Indeed, during the long period Sir Robert sat in Parlia- 

 ment, there was not, we rather think, a single Act of 

 national legislation regarding salmon, except the Irish 

 Act of 1842, and the comparatively unimportant and 

 purely mischievous Scotch Act (" Home Drummond's") 

 of 1828. The true inferences, therefore, to be drawn 

 from the fact that many proposals for salmon legislation 

 came before Parliament during a long period in modern 

 times, are, that there was a wide-spread conviction that 

 something required to be done ; perhaps some difficulty 

 in determining what that something ought to be ; and 

 certainly very great difficulty in getting that something, 

 or anything whatever, actually done. The repeated, but 

 unanswered calls for a remedy are proofs, not of the in- 

 effectiveness of remedies, but of the existence of disease. 

 It is important to note that the recent legislation has 

 proceeded, as the future legislation is proposed to pro- 

 ceed, on precisely the same principles as the ancient 

 legislation — viewing similar things as evils, and apply- 

 ing similar restrictions as remedies. The principles on 



