45 



labour of peaceful industry in these immediate districts, once mainly 

 devoted to the production and exportation of illicit spirits, has been pro- 

 ductive of the greatest moral and social benefits ; but it only requires a 

 little more encouragement to be permitted to the illegal fishing of these 

 waters to return a large portion of the tenantry to dissipation, idleness, and 

 misery. 



" The Society have maintained their right to these fisheries in no nig- 

 gardly spirit, and solely with a view to their preservation, and for the 

 benefit of the plantation and neighbourhood. They have always looked 

 with anxiety to the legal preservation of these fisheries ; because, on the 

 one hand, without such protection it must soon cease to exist ; and on the 

 other, the large sums of money spent by the lessees in the country in em- 

 ploying the poor, and procuring and packing, and other branches of the 

 fisheries, appear to the Society a most desirable investment of English 

 capital, expended in a manner most advantageous to the comfort and 

 employment of large masses of people. They would urge these considera- 

 tions upon the magistrates and gentry of these districts; and if this general 

 reasoning fails to convince, they would ask them to imagine the conse- 

 quences that would follow the successful resistance of the Society's rights, 

 and the admission of claims such as those set up by Mr. Staples or Lord 

 Donegal. It is well known that a large portion of the income of this Society, 

 and therefore of its means of usefulness, is derived from the fisheries of the 

 Foyle and the Bann. Unless the civilities shown your Deputation in Ireland 

 are mere idle compliments, all the country feels that this income is wisely 

 and benevolently expended for the benefit of the province. Surely, then, 

 the Irish Society has a right to claim from the magistracy of this district, 

 and from the country which it is their most anxious wish to improve and 

 protect, that moral influence which every man possesses in the support of 

 their rights, so valuable and so important. Suppose it were otherwise, and 

 that the fisheries passed into the hands of individuals, it might be conceived 

 that, in the hands of one or two proprietors, the salmon would be rigidly 

 enough protected, caught, and packed for market ; the profit would, how- 

 ever, naturally go into the pockets of the parties, and be safely kept there, 

 without reference to schools, hospitals, churches, and meeting-houses ; but 

 in this case the admission of the rights of one would be to admit the rights of 

 all, and the noble fisheries of the Foyle and the Bann would soon become the 

 sacrifice of an universal, an ill-judging, and a ruinous covetousness, and not 

 expended, as it now is, in improving and administering to the wants of the 

 community at large. 



" Your Deputation have thus felt it right to bring under the notice of the 

 Society, and through them to the public, the general views which occur to 

 them on this subject; but the duty which they owe to the body of which 

 they form a part compels them also to lay before them the particular facts 

 which have led to this train of reasoning and remonstrance. It is well 

 known throughout Ireland, but particularly to the North, that the various 

 and protracted law proceedings on the subject of the fisheries ended in 1836 

 in the complete establishment of the right of the Society to the exclusive 

 fishery of the Foyle and the Bann. In these law proceedings every defence 

 that the ingenuity of counsel could suggest was set up, and amongst others, 

 the pretended claim of Lord Donegal. Mr. Staples, the principal defendant, 

 finally signed a submission, of which the following is a copy, under circum- 

 stances that will hereafter appear : 



