82 SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 



things the most astonishing* and can only be accounted for, 

 by supposing that the case was not laid before his lordship in 

 its proper light ; for we cannot permit ourselves to believe, for 

 one moment, that, if it had been fully explained, this would 

 have been the case. We entertain the highest possible respect 

 for the Court of Appeal. Its judgments are almost always 

 founded in correct principles, and the mind of the judge is 

 invariably pure ; but if cases are not fully developed, and 

 placed in their proper light, error, the lot of fallible man, must 

 sometimes find its way into the judgment, though we believe 

 that in no Court on earth does it do so more seldom ; and of 

 all cases which can come into the Court, there are none so 

 liable to misconstruction and error as those which regard the 

 salmon fishery, for there are none which either the judge or 

 the counsel, or even the agents, can be expected, from their 

 nature, to be so little acquainted with. An occasional error, 

 in a fishing case, seems therefore, in an English Court, scarcely 

 avoidable ; but we have not the least doubt that when such is 

 discovered, the candour and the love of justice by which all 

 noble minds are distinguished, will lead the highly gifted indi- 

 vidual who presides in that Court to take the earliest opportu- 

 nity of rectifying it. In the mean time, however, its effects 

 must be fatally disastrous to many individuals, and to many 

 fisheries, and the sooner, therefore, another case of the same 

 kind is brought under the view of the Court the better. That 

 the judgment is founded in a wrong principle there cannot be 

 a doubt, because that CANNOT be a right principle which en- 

 ables one man to rob another of his property, under the pre- 

 tence that a third person might do so ; but unless it was 

 explained to the judge that such would be the effect of the 

 principle, which we understand was not done in the case in 

 question, how was he to know it ? How, unacquainted per- 

 sonally with the subject, was he to know the extent of spolia- 

 tion to which the principle would lead ? That all salmon- 

 fishings emanate from the Crown is true ; and so, as we said 

 before, do all lands ; but both can be now only considered as 

 private property, entitled to the same legal protection. With 



* September 13, 1831. 



