SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 63 



To the public this contention between these proprietors can 

 be of no importance, in any other view than as it affects the 

 market supply of salmon, and we have already shown that that 

 supply, which was at its height, at a period when the fishery 

 was almost entirely limited to the rivers, has been declining in 

 proportion as the coast heritors have interfered with it, and 

 more rapidly since the introduction of new modes of fishing 

 than before. The fishery is scourged into barrenness, and our 

 courts of law seem to suppose the best remedy is to scourge it 

 more, by allowing all species of machinery on the coasts. In 

 the same way, when a land farm is run out by overcropping, 

 the best way to render it fertile would be to crop it still more ! 

 To recover the rivers, the owners of the fishery ought, volun- 

 tarily, to allow many fish to escape ; but can this sacrifice be 

 expected of the owners of the rivers for the benefit of the coast 

 heritors ? What farmer, as we said before, would be at the 

 expense of liming his land, if others were to carry away the 

 crop ? Monoply, truly ! If the coast heritors had not a mo- 

 nopoly of the produce of their lands, we believe they would put 

 themselves to very little trouble or expense to raise crops. 

 Honest Eob Eoy used to ease their predecessors of a few of 

 their spare stots and heifers, and they wish to do the same 

 friendly office to the owners of the rivers. 



One great cause, we may say the principal cause, of the 

 errors committed by the courts of law, in all cases relative to 

 the salmon-fishery, is, as we before remarked, their considering 

 salmon as common sea fishes, like haddocks, swimming about 

 at random, and visiting rivers, as chance may direct, instead of 

 attending to the peculiar instincts by which they are distin- 

 guished from other fishes. We trace the effects of this grand 

 error to all their acts, and even to their construction of the law, 

 which cannot be correct when founded on an erroneous prin- 

 ciple, or an erroneous view of a subject. 



We shall begin, for example, with the rights of the Crown. 

 Lawyers tell us that salmon are inter regalia, and belong all to 

 the Crown. That they did so originally is admitted ; but we 

 conceive the Crown has long ago denuded itself of all its right 

 to them, and that, as we said before, after having granted away 



