60 SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 



salmon-fishings, which, being a species of property entirely 

 distinct from land, requires a special grant. The lands may be 

 granted to one person, and the salmon-fishing adjacent to the 

 lands to another. There can, therefore, be no right of salmon- 

 fishing, in a legal view, any more than in a natural view, ex 

 adverso of lands, which is mere legal jargon devoid of sense, 

 until a right to such be conjoined to the lands by royal grant. 



The next great principle of our law, lawyers tell us, is, that 

 after the sovereign has made a grant of property, it is no longer 

 in the power, or, as they express it, it is ultra vires of the sove- 

 reign to injure it, or to authorise others to do so, in any manner 

 of way. Without this there would be no security to property. 

 No man could call his estate his own. The Crown might be 

 constantly curtailing it, or be granting servitudes over it. It 

 would be utterly valueless and unsaleable. 



For example, after the Crown has made a grant of an estate, 

 and it has become private property, it would be ultra vires of 

 the Crown to grant even the servitude of a road over any part 

 of it in favour of an adjacent proprietor ; or if there was a mill 

 on the estate, the Crown could not authorise such adjacent 

 proprietor to obstruct or intercept, even upon his own property, 

 the stream of water proceeding to it, to the loss or injury of 

 its owner. No court of law would sanction such an act. It 

 would be deemed quite illegal and of no effect. 



Upon the same principle, after the Crown has made a grant 

 of a salmon-river, or, what is nearly the same, the salmon- 

 fishings of a river, it can be no more in the legal power of the 

 Crown to authorise conterminous proprietors of lands or others 

 to intercept the salmon proceeding to the river, than to inter- 

 cept the water on its progress to the mill. The principle is 

 exactly the same in both cases. We defy any casuist of the 

 Parliament House to make a distinction between them. It is, 

 therefore, clear that all the grants of salmon-fishings to coast 

 proprietors, which, as we have shown, can only act by inter- 

 ception of the fish on their way to the rivers, to the manifest 

 loss and injury of the owners of the river fisheries, being all 

 made in direct violation of a. great and acknowledged principle 

 of the law, are all necessarily, radically, and fundamentally 



