102 



This enactment has been received with general approbation 

 and cordiality throughout Ireland ; it has infused a vitality for 

 protection through the river arteries of the island, and a new 

 era of better prospects for fishermen will date from it. The 

 frequent meeting of persons chosen as Conservators to discharge 

 the public duty of promoting a common good insures a unity 

 of action, and that practical co-operation between parties distant, 

 or differently interested, on which the success of conservation 

 depends. 



The Irish Fishery Laws have evidently not been carried out as 

 they ought, and might have been, either by the executive or the 

 magistracy. Of this, abundant testimony may be adduced from 

 the reports laid annually before Parliament, and will also be found 

 in the evidence and documents of the late Select Committee. 

 The continued non-observance, and frequent breaches of these 

 laws may be said to have influenced the length and breadth of 

 the land. The subject therefore assumes a deep and serious 

 import when considered in its influence on the moral character 

 of the Irish people. To ' render the laws a reality' should be 

 the earnest aim of all on whom the duty of administrating them 

 devolves. Disrespect to these laws in particular is not merely 

 detrimental to the prosperity of fisheries, but in spreading a 

 contempt for the law and constituted authorities in general- 

 for the power that makes statutes which fail to be enforced, 

 must tend to lower that standard of public opinion, the raising of 

 which is of the first moment to this nation. 



Sir John Davies records that, ' there is no people under the 

 sunne that doth love equall and indifferent justice better than 

 the Irish :' writing at a time when their desire for it must have 

 been strongly felt. 



Our Fishery Laws have a novel bearing in relation to the 

 interests they effect in rivers; their full operation will also be 

 novel. Much will depend on the .justice in which they are con- 

 ceived to have been framed, and on the good sense and temper 

 in which they are enforced by our magistracy and conservators. 

 The public must see clearly that their eventual benefit is fairly 

 regarded, and that statutes have been devised and penalties 

 inflicted with the object of protecting just public and private 

 rights, and of deterring future injury to a general good. By an 

 impartial administration of such laws, and a mild but firm per- 

 severance in enforcing them, a better spirit will arise towards 

 them among our quick-sighted people, and a cordial co-operation 

 be created in all ranks, serving, under Providence, to increase a 

 provision so bountifully given to our country. 



