APPENDIX. 147 



in that locality, twelve boats with large crews, and 

 nets of 400 yards in length ; all these persons ob- 

 tained a good livelihood from it, and the Island- 

 bridge Fishery had at the same time an ample har- 

 vest. I sold in that year £800 worth of salmon, as 

 the books of my factor in the wholesale fish-market will 

 prove. But the statistics of the present year stand 

 thus — all these parties at the mouth ruined, and the 

 take at this Fishery barely sufficient to pay the wages 

 of the men. Similar results have taken place at all 

 the other rivers of the kingdom, showing the extent 

 to which property, employment, and occupation, have 

 been prostrated by the Act of 1842. 



The Scotch Salmon-fisheries, where fixed nets are 

 also in use, are differently circumstanced as regards 

 public rights. There the fisheries are mostly pri- 

 vate property. The evidence of the Lord Advocate 

 of Scotland is, that in Scotland, private rights are 

 the rule, and public rights the exception. The own- 

 ers can therefore regulate their fisheries as they 

 think fit. The Duke of Sutherland has lately, to 

 recruit one of his rivers, stopped all fishing in it for 

 two years, and the Duke of Richmond and other 

 great proprietors have ample control over their own 

 rivers; but in Ireland, no such mode of stopping the 

 exhaustion can be adopted. The framers of the Act 

 of 1842, made no adequate provision to compensate 

 for the additional waste, and they need not now re- 

 sort to the plea that the season just terminated has 

 been bad everywhere. No such dechne as that of 



