DIFFICULTY OF THE WEIR QUESTION. 47 
right to catch ten fish at the cost of not allowing one to 
pass up. 
A fishing-mill-dam under these circumstances became 
nothing more or less than an ordinary dam, erected purely 
for milling or other purposes, without any view to the 
capture of fish. The position of such weirs is that, as their 
owners had no direct interest in the fisheries, they could 
not be called upon to provide a remedy for the injury 
which, with a sublime disregard for anything beyond their 
own immediate purposes, they had inflicted on the fisheries. 
However serious the effect of a weir, or a series of weirs, in 
a salmon river, they were held guiltless because the object 
for which they were erected was legitimate. The justice of 
this view cannot be questioned, however much the existing 
state of things may be deplored. If, when weirs first began 
to be erected, Parliament had foreseen their effect, and had 
insisted on proper steps being taken to prevent injury to 
the fisheries, it would have been a different matter; but, 
when weirs had been in existence for years, perhaps for 
centuries, it would have been impolitic suddenly to call 
upon the owners to do what might possibly prove to be an 
injury to themselves for the sake of benefiting an industry 
in which they had no interest. 
With new dams, or old dams rebuilt or “ enhanced,” as 
the old Acts expressed it, the case is different. Parlia- 
ment has insisted that all such structures in salmon rivers 
shall be provided with an efficient pass, on condition, 
however, that no injury shall be occasioned thereby to the 
navigation of any river or canal. 
This proviso was a natural and a proper one, but—like 
another equally necessary proviso, that a fishery proprietor 
or a Board of Conservators constructing a pass in a dam 
belonging to another person is liable to pay compensation 
