merit it shall appear that they do not promote the inte- 

 rests of the public. This, indeed, is the only legitimate 

 ground on which the Legislature could ever have taken 

 the fishery under its controul. It would have been in 

 opposition to the interests of the state, as well as to com- 

 mon justice, to prohibit the most successful mode of fish- 

 ing at the stations belonging to one heritor, had no bet- 

 ter end been in view than the private advantage of ano- 

 ther heritor, who might happen not to possess the same 

 local advantages. Such an act would have been absurd 

 and iniquitous. No man would venture, in these times, 

 to advocate such a policy; nor can it ever have been, in 

 any age, the policy of the Legislature. That the exist- 

 ing statutes, accordingly, were viewed by the Supreme 

 Court, as exclusively directed to public objects, every one 

 must be aware, who has attended to the legal discussions 

 which have taken place since the introduction of the 

 stake-net mode of fishing. Nay, so forcibly was this view 

 urged by some of the Judges, in advising the Tay case, in 

 1812, that they deprecated the very idea of the statutes 

 having been framed for the private interest of individuals, 

 as * inexpedient ,' ' absurd,"* and ' unjust ? as ' abominable? 

 as an ' imputation on the Legislature.' 1 * 



* The observations of the late Lord Meadowbank, and of 

 Lord Gillies, on this subject, are well deserving of attention. 



Lord Meadorvbank, (whose opinion, by the bye, was hos- 

 tile to stake-nets upon the law of the case), said, in explanation 

 of the grounds of his opinion, in favour of the pleas of the up- 

 per heritors, that f I by no means rest on this, that the legislature 

 ' nould have been even justified in depriving the inferior heritors, 

 ' on the estuaries at the mouths of great rivers, of their right of 



'jtsking 



