84 SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 



Woolwich ; but let it be what it might, were it as salt as the 

 ocean, could that justify so gross an act of injustice to the 

 whole upper fisheries as to allow the passage of the fish, only 

 178 yards in breadth, the only way by which they could reach 

 them, to be blocked up with fixed machinery, which must be 

 deemed illegal, and a nuisance in common law, were the fish- 

 ing statutes, or the supposed quality of the water to which 

 they allude, not in existence ? The whole of the salmon of the 

 four upper rivers must necessarily pass through this narrow 

 channel, of the breadth we have described ; and yet the Court, 

 guided by their new law founded on ignorance of the nature of 

 the fishery, not only allow a man (who has no right, even by 

 his own avowal) to sweep the channel with movable nets, but 

 even to plant it with fixed machinery, leaving the upper heri- 

 tors and their tacksman, with his rents and fishing establish- 

 ments, to their fate. 



