SALMON LEGISLATION. 159 



engines the same rules that they sought to apply to the 

 much smaller number of fixed engines belonging to the 

 lower proprietors, and that they showed their desire to 

 be not to kill fish by all legal and available means, but 

 only by one means, and that the least destructive of all. 

 Rather unwisely, the lower proprietors as a body made 

 common cause with those of their number who owned 

 stell-nets, and the battle was fought on the general 

 principle that these engines were sanctioned by imme- 

 morial usage, recognised as property by law, included in 

 family settlements, and therefore not subject to abolition 

 without compensation, either by a private Bill, or by any 

 kind of legislation. But the Legislature, merely on the 

 ground that these engines were proved to be injurious to 

 the general interest of the fisheries, and that they par- 

 took of the nature of fixtures, which are adverse to the 

 spirit of the salmon-fishery laws, entirely abolished them 

 without compensation. There was of course a consider- 

 able outcry, and the counsel for the stell-net owners 

 announced that " the decision would be ruinous to some 

 of his (dients, and absolutely fatal to some of the most 

 important fisheries." But, apart from the argument as to 

 justice, the result has quite refuted all such statements — 

 the rental, not only of the Tweed, but of those portions 

 where the stell-net existed, has very considerably in- 

 creased since the abolition of the engines which were 

 represented as constituting so large a portion of the 

 value. It remains to be added, however, that this Parlia- 

 mentary decision, taken with its sequels, or rather want 

 of sequels, supplies a very striking instance of the want 

 of consistency or fixed principles with which legislation, 



