488 REGULATION OF SALMON RIVERS. [CHAP. XL 



that the wasteful destruction committed by poachers and 

 depredators, if suffered to have their way, is carried on. It 

 lies with those to whom the rights of fishing, and the lands 

 adjacent to those parts of the streams belong, either to permit 

 the ruinous waste of the breeding fish to go on, or to take 

 measures for protecting them. They cannot take either course 

 without in the one case conferring a benefit, and in the other 

 permitting an injury, to all the parties lower down. But it is 

 almost needless to say that they will not make exertions 

 or incur expense to preserve the fish, unless encouraged to 

 do so by being allowed to reap some share of the produce of 

 the waters." 



The laws of Scotland as to her salmon rivers are confessedly 

 defective confessed by the constant efforts to amend them, 

 often ending in only making them worse. This will be eternal 

 if some attempt be not made to act according to the reason of 

 the thing ; clearing the ground, and starting on a new and 

 rational principle, instead of tinkering or trying to tinker 

 what is past mending, and never ought to have been. Rivers 

 are subjects entirely different in their nature from lands. A 

 man, having secured a patch of land, may (as is generally 

 understood) do anything he pleases with what he calls "his 

 own " but render it a nuisance. This is wrong ; for his obliga- 

 tion to the country, if not to himself, is to use it to the best 

 advantage for the public good. As to rivers, this obligation is 

 more distinct. They are .more of the nature of public pro- 

 perty, both as regards the public generally and those holding 

 property on their banks and so having private interests in 

 them. No man at the mouth of a river has any moral or 

 legal right to stop the fish from ascending to their breeding- 

 places. This, clear as it may seem, is not generally recognised, 

 and hence the loss to the country, and misery to the useful 

 and valuable animals bred in them, or that might be bred in 

 them, from the ignorant and reckless self-seeking of some, and 



