168 THE SALMON. 



temporarily lost a little by being subjected to the same 

 new restrictions regarding times and seasons as the 

 owners of the ordinary and ancient fisheries, they would 

 have gained a hundred times more in being for the first 

 time recognised as equal in rights to other fisheries by a 

 Legislature which had never before recognised them as 

 having any legal rights or existence at all. In a word, 

 by the metamorphosis attempted by the Commons' Com- 

 mittee, the Bill designed to suppress fixed nets in Scot- 

 land would have been turned into the first legislative 

 recognition or authorization of those devices. In these 

 circumstances the Lord Advocate wisely resolved to 

 withdraw the mangled and distorted remains. The chief 

 blame of this failure lies not upon the Lord Advocate, 

 who attempted excellently, but on the facts that he was 

 strongly opposed and weakly befriended that the fixed- 

 net owners showed themselves united and energetic, and 

 the river owners divided, apathetic, and captious. 



In 1862, the Lord Advocate tried again, and intro- 

 duced a Bill which, after undergoing various alterations 

 in its progress through Parliament, forms the existing 

 law for all Scotch fisheries north of the Tweed. This 

 Bill did a good deal in itself, and remitted a good 

 deal to be done by Commissioners acting under the 

 powers it gave them. It differed from its predecessors 

 chiefly in omitting the main point, which had also proved 

 the grand difficulty it left the question of fixed engines 

 almost untouched, and having to include them in the 

 new restrictions imposed upon other engines, took care to 

 declare that no mode of fishing should by the Act be 

 made legal which was or might have been illegal before : 



