THE FISHERIES. 9 



our jurisprudence. Many of the difficulties which 

 surrounded the subject were adequately met by the 

 old Irish Fishery Acts, repealed in 1842, but nothing 

 has resulted from tlie chano-e but a leo;al chaos. 

 Abstract legal questions, such as, the point at which 

 fresh-water rivers or streams should be deemed na^ 

 vigable, or were public highways {haut streams le 

 Boy) — seemed but ill suited to a country, one of 

 whose chief resources at the present day is its water- 

 power. The old Irish Fishery Acts legislated for 

 and recognized, the title to weirs, held by patent or 

 charter, or to which an uninterrupted possession of 

 thirty-one years could be shown; and the limits and 

 bounds of Salmon-fisheries were likewise regulated 

 by the same period of prescription or enjoyment ; 

 but those Acts being repealed, the titles are now all 

 at sea, and every fishing-weir and mill-weir in the 

 kingdom might be now objected to, as an obstruction 

 to navigation. It might, by the way, be computed 

 that the proportion of solid fishing-weirs to mill-weirs 

 in Ireland is about as one to fifty ; or, in other words, 

 that for one fishing-weir, we have, in many rivers, 

 fifty or perhaps a hundred mill- weirs. Those who 

 sought to unsettle the one, forgot that they should 

 prostrate the other also. It would answer indeed 

 little purpose, or rather no purpose whatsoever, to 

 upset the title to an ancient fishing-weir, without 

 also prostrating and removing every mill-weir in the 

 same river. 



Now it is with reference to property in fisheries, 



