146 APPENDIX. 



public rights in which the subject has an interest 

 cannot be ahenated, and under the Act itself these 

 eno'ines are illegal, if they interfere with navigation, 

 or the public right of fishing, which they unquestion- 

 ably do. It is now maintained that the statute does 

 not authorise their use, and that they may be abated 

 as a nuisance. This abnormal state of things cannot 

 be continued — it endangers the public peace, and 

 trains up a whole population in acts of insubordina- 

 tion : the Government will not persevere, or again 

 send a brig of war into Ballyshannon roads, to do 

 duty over a bag net, nor can her Majesty's cutters 

 in Waterford harbour, manoeuvre any longer with a 

 whole fleet of cotmen ; the judges have pronounced 

 the la^y, and let the promoters of the Act of 1842 

 now aid to remedy the mischief; they have failed to 

 establish a right, although some of them on the 

 Shannon, reap a handsome reward for their legisla- 

 tive labours. 



Pubhc rights of fishing obtain largely in Ireland ; 

 they exist to a very great extent in the rivers Suir, 

 Nore and Barrow, and also in the Cork river, and 

 in the Shannon, Blackwater and Slaney. Moreover, 

 at every river in Ireland, a pubhc right of fishing for 

 salmon, with draught nets, exists outside the mouth, 

 and in dry seasons this mode of fishing is very pro- 

 ductive to the poor persons who follow the occupa- 

 tion. At the mouth of this river, (the Liffey,) there 

 were in 1843, upwards of one hundred famihes sup- 

 ported by Salmon-fishing. There were then in use 



