28 THE SALMON FISHERIES. 
produce of the salmon fisheries began to fall off in so ° 
marked a manner as to give rise to the impression that the 
stake nets were at the bottom of the mischief, and a local 
Act of Parliament was passed, abolishing these engines 
within a distance of four and a quarter miles on each side 
of the mouth of the river. That the disuse of these 
engines was an advantage was proved by a large increase 
in the number of fish entering the river : but the benefit to 
the fisheries was nullified by the introduction of an almost 
equally destructive implement in the “hang-net” and by the 
erection of fresh stake-nets on the shore beyond the limits 
to which the Act applied. At length, in 1861, Parliament, 
satisfied of the injurious effect of fixed engines, again 
interfered, and prohibited the use of all such instruments 
throughout the whole of England and Wales, except such 
as could prove their legal right to exist by virtue of 
grant or charter or immemorial usage. This sweeping 
measure was justified on the ground that the engines 
in question, besides being a specific injury to the fisheries, 
were, as already pointed out, more or less a public nuisance, 
and, further, that they existed, so far as navigable rivers 
were concerned, in direct defiance of a long series of 
statutes dating from Magna Charta. This great “pal- 
ladium of English liberties” stipulated that “all weirs 
in the Thames and Medway, and throughout all England, 
except by the sea-coast,” should be “utterly put down” :— 
“ Ommnes kidelli” —as Henry III.’s confirmation of the Great 
Charter has it (9 Henry III. c. 23)—“deponantur de cetero 
penitus per Tamisiam et Medwayam et per totam Anglam 
mist per costeram maris.” These “idellc” were fishing 
1 Ruffhead’s edition of the Statutes renders this “dwt only by 
the sea-coast.” This is evidently a mistranslation of the word #7sz in 
the original, which could only have meant “ except.” 
