FUTURE SALMON LEGISLATION. 191 



long before, and without reference to, the introduction 

 of those engines which it was proposed to suppress ; had 

 found other means of fishing available ; and would have 

 had nothing confiscated that it was ever intended he 

 should possess, or that his ancestors ever had possessed. 

 But suppose there were or could be portions of the char- 

 tered shore-fisheries not capable of being fished otherwise 

 than by fixed engines, it is equally true that there are 

 great portions of rivers and estuaries in precisely the 

 same position. Take the Tay for instance. Under a 

 well-known decision of the Courts of Law, defining the 

 boundaries of the " estuary," within which the old Acts 

 were applicable, several estates lost rentals of thousands 

 a year by fixed engines being prohibited, and no other 

 being effective at these spots. It is ridiculously untrue 

 that of fisheries in rivers which but for the law would be 

 fished with fixed engines, all are or can be fished other- 

 wise. On every river and estuary there are whole tracts 

 now valueless as fisheries that would become great pro- 

 perties but for that principle on which all existing laws 

 are based, and yet which is now denounced as a novelty 

 and confiscation. If to subject this new and hitherto 

 favoured class of salmon-fishers to the same restrictions 

 as their neighbours, would render their fisheries almost 

 valueless, that is just saying that their property is 

 naturally and properly of very little value, and is no 

 evidence at all that they are entitled to make it valuable 

 at the cost of their neighbours, and by means in the use 

 of which their neighbours are not allowed to compete. 

 It is surely a fair presumption that the Crown did not 

 contemplate giving a man a fishery at one point, im- 



