166 

 VI. 



THE GREAT LIMERICK WEIR. The Shannon is by far the largest 

 river in the British islands. It has the breadth and value of a navi- 

 gable highway at a distance from its mouth at which the Thames and 

 Severn are, in comparison, inconsiderable streams. It is two hundred 

 and fourteen miles in length, and is navigable through all that extent, 

 except for a few miles. The tide ebbs and flows for sixty-four miles of 

 that distance; and for forty miles the river has an average breadth of 

 a league. 



This great artery for wealth and commerce must once have teemed 

 with the Salmon tribe, as the American rivers are known to have done. 

 It is fed by numerous streams, all as many nurseries for this fish, and 

 expands into wide lakes, in which they may lie secure. 



Without acquiescing in all the views expressed in the following 

 extracts from an article on 'the Illegality of Crown Grants of Public 

 Fisheries in Ireland,' the facts set forth in them show part of the history 

 and effects of the great barrier Weir on the river Shannon. 



"The Shannon gradually narrows to something less than a quarter of 

 a mile at Limerick. About two miles above the city the Corporation 

 erected a weir across the channel, from shore to shore; this weir was 

 so constructed that not a salmon could pass through or over it. Between 

 it and the main sea the Corporation would not allow any one to fish, 

 and between it and the source of the Shannon they of course did not 

 allow a salmon to appear; and thus all the fishing in the river was 

 confined to that one spot, and was managed by five men four to take 

 the fish out of the chambers of the weir, and the fifth to kill and count 

 them. Had that weir been indicted and abated as a nuisance, and all 

 other illegal weirs and fisheries along the course of the river been 

 removed, and all persons been allowed to exercise their rights of fishing, 

 and in a lawful manner only, there would have been 'ample and well 

 paid employment ' afforded to at least forty thousand persons. 



"But it is not the poor alone who are defrauded by these weirs. 

 Every gentleman who has lands on the banks of a fresh water private 

 river, up which salmon would come were they not prevented by these 

 weirs, is defrauded of the full enjoyment of his property; for to the 

 lawful fishery in such a river he is as much entitled as to the fruit in 

 his kitchen garden. The country gentlemen very soon saw the wrong 

 inflicted on them by such weirs, and endeavoured to relieve themselves 

 by the aid of the Legislature. A bill was introduced, in 1784, into the 

 Irish Parliament, for promoting the inland fisheries; one of the clauses 

 of which provided that in each weir on the Shannon there should be 

 fixed a sluice, or flood-gate of six feet in width ; and that it should be 

 left open on Saturday evening to Monday morning, in order to permit 

 the fish to go up the river to spawn. 



" This very fair proposition was opposed by a Limerick member, on 

 the ground that the Corporation 'had for many years enjoyed, under a 

 charter, the right of having weirs on the river Shannon,' and that their 

 chartered rights should not be thus interfered with. The Attorney- 

 General doubted very much the legality of the charter encroaching on 

 private property. The charter mentioned by the honourable gentle- 

 man was undeniably of that description; for by the weirs erected under 



