SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 71 



their way in the dark, at a loss, amid clouds of mystification, 

 supported often by the most barefaced falsehoods, how to act, 

 that we think it would be of vast service to the country if one 

 judge were set apart for fishing cases, whose legal knowledge, 

 all bent upon one object, would soon have added to it so 

 thorough a knowledge of the true nature of the fishery, as 

 would enable him to render the law clear on the subject, and, 

 by reducing the whole to fixed principles, would prevent the 

 absurdities and the anomalies which now daily occur. His 

 remarks and reports would be most valuable, not merely with 

 reference to the rights of parties, but with a view to the im- 

 provement of the fishery as regards the public, while they 

 would save a world of expense in litigation, and much fishing 

 property from destruction. At present the fishery may be said 

 to be absolutely without legal protection, save in the Tay, as if 

 the statutes were framed for that estuary alone. In short, the 

 whole fishing system seems to be in a state of general and ab- 

 solute confusion a state, perhaps, the best possible for the 

 lawyers and agents, but which parties, from the one end of the 

 kingdom to the other, look to with dismay. 



Hitherto it has been considered the law, that without a 

 Crown grant (whether legal or otherwise) salmon-fishing opera- 

 tions could not be legally carried on anywhere ; but, amid all 

 the improvements in the fishery, it is now found, that even this 

 may be dispensed with, and that the salmon may be taken in 

 all parts without a grant ; in other words, the fishery, hitherto 

 limited to the Crown's grantees, has been thrown open to uni- 

 versal spoliation. The cases wherein this new law has been 

 declared, the most important, perhaps, in principle, after the 

 decisions in the Tay and Kintore cases, which has taken place 

 for a century, ought to be generally known, and, when known, 

 will be scarcely believed, so contrary is the principle so un- 

 guardedly and unfortunately laid down, to the common rules 

 of justice. 



Mackenzie, proprietor of the river Shinn, in Sutherlandshire, 

 one of the four salmon-rivers which, combined, form the fresh- 

 water estuary, called by Boethius, and other ancient writers, 

 the Kiver of Portnacoulter, now termed by some the Kyle of 



