150 A YEAE OF LIBERTY ; OE, 



how little is known of earlier legislation, designed for the common 

 good ; or of the long course of suicidal evasions of those laws which 

 reduced our rivers to the brink of ruin. But this is a hackneyed 

 theme ; those evil days are past, and are now matter of history, so 

 we will lay the volume on the shelf, whence hereafter it may be 

 taken, dusty, discoloured, and worm-eaten, to furnish subjects for 

 congratulation to those who live in happier times, when our waters 

 yield their increase, and salmon shall be sold for threepence a pound. 

 When that period arrives, men whose present labours are now lightly 

 regarded, will be held up as public benefactors, whose philanthropy 

 and wisdom entitle them to the grateful remembrance of posterity. 



Half a century ago angling for salmon was so little practised that 

 few persons, except those resident in favoured localities, knew any- 

 thing about it ; and, only forty years since rod fishing was held in 

 such small account that our Acts contained no clause whatever for its 

 regulation. In fact, there is as much fashion in recreation as there 

 is in jdress, and angling at present is undoubtedly the newest mode. 

 Twenty years ago boys were content with football, marbles, rounders, 

 or cricket; and when they went to Cambridge or the sister uni- 

 versity, boating was so *' exigant " that it became the passion. But 

 now, contemporaneously with the first suit, comes home the first 

 outfit for the juvenile disciple of Old Izaak, who shoulders his basket, 

 and, on half -holidays, goes as regularly to the nearest water as did the 

 youth of an earlier generation to the cricket field or the tennis court. 

 What would one of these ardent young spirits say, if he knew that 

 when his father was engaged at a solemn game of leapfrog, the law 

 took so little care of the interests of upper proprietors that the 

 salmon harvest was reaped only at the mouths of rivers ; that such 

 rights were alone deemed worthy of protection ; and that a fresh fish 

 on the higher spawning grounds was almost as much a rara avis as 

 a bustard now is on Salisbury Plain ? Probably " my old governor 

 has been," he would remark, " paying two and nine per pound all his 

 life, and it sarves him right." That is one way to speak of the 

 subject. Another is, that having neglected or squandered our 

 substance, we must endure the penalty. Happily punishment has 



