144 APPENDIX. 



and inconsistent language of an Act of Parliament, 

 and have recommended that the existinoj code should 

 be revised, amended, and consohdated. 



The original Act, 5th and 6th Vic, c. 106, was 

 passed in 1842 : as a specimen of legislation it stands 

 unrivalled : five Acts have been since passed to 

 amend it, and the six Acts now form a code so com- 

 plex, intricate, and contradictory, that no bench of 

 magistrates can administer it. 



I now proceed to suggest the remedial measures 

 that should be introduced, in consolidating the present 

 Fishery Acts, convinced that practical details are 

 better than any circumlocution. 



The fixed nets introduced by the Act of 1842, will 

 form the first subject of inquiry : the extended use 

 of these engines, since the passing of the Act, has 

 perhaps, done more of permanent injury to the fish- 

 eries, than the charter weirs had effected in five cen- 

 turies. The Report of the Select Committee con- 

 demns the policy by which this new monopoly was 

 created — to have permitted the use of these engines 

 upon the open sea shore, would have been in confor- 

 mity with the provisions of ancient statutes, which 

 prohibited fixtures except upon the coasts of the sea; 

 but to have permitted their use in rivers and har- 

 bours, where no prescriptive right before existed, 

 was an encroachment upon pubhc rights without any 

 parallel in modern times. 



The manner in which this was effected, was, by 

 tacitly repealing one of the clauses of Magna Charta, 



