286 FISHES AND FISHING. 



the ground of any person, does not give the inhabit 

 ants of the town or village in which such ground is 

 situated any right to fish in that river, unless the 

 said inhabitants can prove that the pathway has been 

 used without interruption ; also, that they have an 

 gled therefrom during thirty years. If they cannot 

 prove this, any of them who angle from the pathway 

 in question commit a trespass upon the property of 

 the owner of the soil, who has a right to the fishery 

 half way across the river ; or the whole, if he be the 

 proprietor of the land on both sides ; and the Lord of 

 the Manor, as such, has nothing to do with the fishery 

 or fish. 



Mr. Commissioner Murphy made a very sensible 

 and judicious observation, as to sending this case for 

 trial to the Court of Queen's Bench ; the matter ought 

 to have gone before a justice of the peace. Mr. Bland 

 should, I think, have proceeded under the 7th and 8th 

 George IV., cap. xxix., sect. 34 : however, as that gen 

 tleman thought proper to employ lawyers upon the 

 subject, he will now probably have to pay them. 

 Bnt if any of the inhabitants of Leatherhead had been 

 taken before a magistrate for angling, at the place 

 where Lipscombe angled, and proved his right to do 

 so, as before observed, no magistrate could legally 

 convict him under this, or any other act, because the 

 right accrued to such inhabitant by previous laws of 



