SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 61 



ILLEGAL. Such, then, are the boasted rights of the coast pro- 

 prietors. 



When the Crown granted away the river fisheries, all the 

 salmon-fishing property of the Crown was, in fact, exhausted. 

 It had no more to grant, except by taking away what it had 

 already granted by depriving its grantees, the owners of the 

 rivers, of a part of what had already become their vested rights. 

 To say that the Crown had other salmon-fishing property on 

 the coasts to grant, as if salmon were fixed to the lands like 

 oysters, is a perfect absurdity. The salmon merely pass along 

 the coast in their progress to the rivers ; and all the Crown 

 could do, if it had the legal power to do so, would be to 

 authorise the proprietors of the lands to intercept them in 

 passing, which would be, in fact, a SERVITUDE upon the rivers ; 

 but it could not be called a property, though it might be 

 attached to property. Thus, for example, were the Crown to 

 make a grant of a rookery, the rooks, after foraging all day, 

 might, when returning in the evening to the rookery, be killed 

 and intercepted at various parts on their way. Now, suppose 

 the Crown were to grant a right to the owners of those parts 

 or stations where the rooks were so killed or intercepted to do 

 so, which, after having granted the rookery, and it had become 

 the property of another, we conceive it would be not only ultra 

 vires, but an act of swindling in the Crown to do ; still these 

 stations could not be called rookeries, but merely servitudes upon 

 the rookery, which might be so multiplied as to extinguish the 

 rookery altogether, and thus deprive the owner of his whole 

 property. And it is thus, exactly, that the Crown has been 

 using the owners of the rivers, by illegal grants to the pro- 

 prietors of lands situated on the coasts, to intercept the salmon 

 in their return to them, and which the Scotch Court are doing 

 all in their power to favour and support, even by means of 

 illegal engines, and to the utter destruction of the river fisheries. 

 That the river fisheries were granted long before coast fish- 

 ings were thought of is quite obvious. Salmon, when congre- 

 gated within the narrow limits of a river, were easily caught 

 even in the rudest ages ; but it required a considerably advanced 

 state of civilisation before means were invented of taking them 

 in the sea, and accordingly till lately scarcely any have been 



