SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 59 



incessant care, in keeping the rivers always well stocked with 

 breeders, watching the spawning-fords and fry, lessening the 

 number of their enemies, and taking every other means that 

 would increase the number of fish, for their own benefit and 

 the benefit of the public. Under the present system, as there 

 can be but little motive or inducement to improve, so none of 

 these results can take place ; for what owner of a farm would 

 be at expense and trouble for its improvement, if the crops 

 were to be carried off by others ? The loss which the public 

 sustain from the present system must, therefore, be obvious. 



But upon what principle does the proprietor of a land-estate 

 situated on the coast of the sea, at perhaps twenty or thirty 

 miles' distance from a salmon river, claim a right to its salmon ? 

 How can he connect himself with them ? They do not even 

 trespass on his lands, like bees or pigeons, so as to afford so 

 much as a pretext upon which to engraft a claim to them. If 

 they migrate to the ocean, the ocean does not belong to him. 

 The rights of his lands end at the water-edge. He has not a 

 particle of right one inch beyond that more than any other in- 

 dividual of the community, or to the salmon passing in the 

 adjacent water, any more than he has to the birds which are 

 flying in the air over his head. To talk, therefore, of his na- 

 tural right, ex adverso (as lawyers say) of his lands, to the 

 salmon belonging to the rivers, passing by in an element to 

 which his lands can pretend no right, is a perfect absurdity. 

 He might as well claim, ex adverso of his lands, a right to the 

 ships which are sailing past them. If the owners of the lands 

 have any right at all, it must be a legal right, opposed to the 

 natural right of the owners of the rivers. 



Let us then examine this pretended legal right. We believe 

 it to be, au fond, very little better than the other. We are told 

 by lawyers, that the first great principle of the feudal law is, 

 that the whole lands, rivers, and salmon-fishings in the king- 

 dom belong originally to the sovereign, from whom all rights 

 to such must emanate, and who may dispose of them either to- 

 gether or separately as he may think fit. When the sovereign 

 makes a grant of a land estate, the grant conveys a right to the 

 lands and all that is upon them ; but it cariies no right to 



