SI 



advantages Ireland possesses for inland carriage by water, 

 which excels that by land, in reducing the cost of transport. 

 He observes, that the extent of the principal rivers, and the 

 number and magnitude of the lakes in this island, present 

 natural means of communication such as are seldom equalled, 

 and that the structure of the central country affords unusual 

 facilities for the construction of canals. 



Before the Act of 5 & 6 Vic,, c. 106, became law, those of the 

 Community who might wish to exercise the common-law right 

 of fishing in the rivers of Ireland, found much of this species 

 of property, which is of a commonable nature, in the hands of 

 private parties, whether in virtue of grants from the Crown, or 

 of ' several' powers of capture. The principal usufruct of many 

 large rivers was in the hands of lessees of companies, or of indi- 

 viduals, and exercised by movable or fixed apparatus, or in those 

 of individuals, by means of solid barriers stretching from bank to 

 bank. An exclusive right to numerous small streams was main- 

 tained by others. At the mouths of the larger and more public 

 rivers there were stake-weirs extending to low-water mark, and 

 bag-nets on the coast reaching beyond it. Some of these privi- 

 leges were sanctioned by a high antiquity, but the prescriptive 

 claims to many of the powers exercised were often in more or 

 less degree doubtful. The public rights enjoyed were farther 

 encroached upon by the new Act. The dubious establishment* 

 of some of these private claims, and giving facilities and legality 

 to the erection and maintenance of novel and additional means 

 of capture of Salmon on the shores of estuaries, and in rivers, 

 where they had been hitherto unlawful, was, at the least, oppres- 

 sive to those whose interests were thereby disadvantaged. In 

 many cases the profits of fishing were diverted from the hands of 

 the many to the few. So hazardous an experimentf should have 



* So far from removing the ' doubts which exist with respect to the right to 

 use stake- weirs and nets, bag and other fixed nets in the sea and tideways along 

 the coast of Ireland, and which right it is necessary to define and declare' (18th 

 section) the effect practically has been, in the trials before different tribunals, 

 that magistrates, barristers, and judges, entertain conflicting opinions upon the 

 interpretation to be given to the statute. See the reports of trials at Water- 

 ford, Kilkenny and Wexford, and the appeals to the Queen's Bench, referred 

 to in the Report of the Select Committee, both in the Minutes of Evidence, and 

 in the Appendix. 



Under the 10th Charles I., (repealed by this Act,) stationary contrivances 

 were clearly illegal in rivers, even within the limits of a several fishery ; but 

 by the above-quoted section, a bonus is held out to a man who has violated the 

 law for ten or twenty years, by saying ' you have succeeded in keeping u 

 your illegal erection for so many years, and here, therefore, is a clear title.' . 

 Evidence of Sir R. De Burgho, p. 101. 



' Any attempt to set up a peculiar right was a usurpation and fraud upon 

 the inhabitants.' Evidence of R. Allen, esq., p. 326. 



f The effects generally fell heaviest on the poorer fishermen, who were de- 

 prived in numbers of their livelihood. After making an experiment ' in cor- 

 pore vilo,' on a living subject, the recovery of the patient ought to be at- 

 tended to. 



