FUTURE SALMON LEGISLATION. 181 



picion that the fishing was to be performed by fixed nets. 

 All the charters for sea-coast fisheries were granted, and 

 nil those fisheries were worked, long before those engines 

 were resorted to or thought of. It is therefore not an 

 inference, but a simple matter of fact, that, if the owners 

 of sea-coast fisheries were now compelled to recur to the 

 machinery which they used at first, and which is the 

 only kind permitted to their neighbours still, they would 

 have left to them all that it was ever intended they 

 should have, and all that they ever had, till, within these 

 few years, they, at their own hand, seized what had from 

 ancient times belonged to others. 



The question is not whether the sea-shore proprie- 

 tors holding fishing charters shall retain their right of 

 salmon-fishing, but whether they, and they alone, shall be 

 allowed to fish by any and every means they can devise ; 

 more especially, whether they are to be allowed to use 

 a species of engines not contemplated when they acquired 

 their right of fishing, not used by them till a very recent 

 period, and strictly prohibited to all their neighbours. 

 It is not a question of taking away any " right,''* but of 

 applying the same regulation to the same right at one 

 spot as is applied to it at another round the corner. It 

 is not a question of taking away any portion of any kind 

 of "property," but of bringing all portions of the same 

 kind of property under the same law. 



The assertion that these nets are " legal," is question- 

 able as fact, and worthless as argument. Their legality 

 is not judicially decided ; if they are legal, it is by over- 

 sight, or rather want of foresight ; and though they were 

 entirely and unquestionably legal, they would still be in 



