SALMON-FISHERY OP SCOTLAND. 101 



on the clearest grounds, without being entangled in the mazes 

 of chicanery, uncertain as to the result, but always sure, be 

 that what it may, of being well fleeced and, perhaps, as in the 

 cases of Houston and Gilchrist, of having some hundreds of 

 pounds of costs to pay to the trespassers. 



The effects of the Kintore decision have been most disastrous 

 to many of the Scotch salmon-fisheries. Had the decision in 

 that case been the same as in the Tay case, it would have put 

 an end, at once, to all litigation on the subject ; but those de- 

 cisions being contrary to each other, the one declaring stake- 

 nets illegal in friths, the other legal in the sea, a door has been 

 opened to endless litigation, there being no decided principle 

 by which a line of distinction can be drawn, in waters varying 

 so much from each other, to ascertain exactly where an engine 

 is legal, or where it is not. In every case, all the defence 

 necessary is just to assert that the engine complained of is 

 situated in the sea ; and should it be in water as fresh as if it 

 were taken out of a fountain, it will answer all the ends of 

 delay, chicanery, and injustice, and the most scandalous spolia- 

 tion of property for at least three or four years : while the 

 injured party, thus despoiled of his property, involved in all 

 the chicanery of the Scotch complicated system, and ruined by 

 expenses, has every chance, through the treachery of his agent, 

 or some whim or crotchet of the Court, of being ultimately cast, 

 in spite of the justice of his case, with costs. Sucli are the 

 effects of our present blessed system. Since the decision on 

 the Kintore case, so many bag-nets have been placed in the 

 sea, up to the very mouths of the rivers Dee and Don, that 

 only one-fourth of the fish usually caught in those rivers is 

 now permitted to enter them, the other three-fourths being 

 intercepted in those engines. Yet these rivers seem just as 

 much entitled to legal protection as the Tay ; and, assuredly, 

 the statutes were never meant for partial operation, for nothing 

 can be more general than the words in which they are ex- 

 pressed ; extending, as has been shown, to all waters within 

 reach of the tide, whether fresh, salt, or mixed. We trust the 

 proprietors of the North and South Esks will bring a case from 

 these rivers into Court, rather than be for ever exposed to such 



