SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 151 



To say that the lands on each side may claim half the river, as 

 if they met in the middle of it, can rest on no principle, for the 

 whole of the river continues the property of the Sovereign, or 

 of the person to whom the Sovereign may have granted it ; but 

 if the rivers belonged to the lands, the Sovereign could not, in 

 any instance, grant a river, for in NO instance could he have a 

 river to grant ; yet we know that in many instances the Sove- 

 reign has granted the rivers together with their salmon-fishery, 

 distinct from the lands, with which, in law, they are considered 

 to have no connection. The only right, then, of any kind, 

 which the owner of the lands can claim in a river beyond the 

 bounds of his grant, must be as a servitude, founded on pre- 

 scription, as before remarked. 



The right of the Sovereign to the trouts, as well as to the 

 salmon, in those rivers, is beyond dispute ; since, if all the 

 lands and all the rivers originally belonged to him, all that 

 was upon the lands and all that was in the rivers must have 

 necessarily belonged to him also, according to the usual law of 

 property. Lawyers no doubt tell us that salmon are inter 

 regalia, and trouts not. They may just as well tell us that 

 the whole kingdom is inter regalia, since all the lands and 

 rivers of which it is composed are supposed to belong to the 

 Crown, as well as the salmon. Why salmon should be specially 

 considered inter regalia we leave to those to explain who can 

 unravel legal inconsistency. We think it likely the salmon 

 were looked upon in those days as SEA fishes, which, only 

 visited rivers occasionally, and that it was in that view they 

 were considered, with the sturgeon and whale, to be inter regalia, 

 without which they might be killed in the sea without a Crown 

 grant ; but this does not in the least affect the argument, or 

 rather the principle, that, as owner of the rivers, the Crown had 

 a right to the trouts in them, just as much as the owner of a 

 land estate has a right to the nettles on the land as well as to 

 the wheat, or to the shrubs as well as to the trees, that grow 

 upon it. The right is founded upon a principle of property 

 which is utterly unassailable. 



The question then arises, To whom has the Crown given the 

 right of these trouts ? The owners of the land say, The trouts, 



