512 SALMON LEGISLA TION IN SCOTLAND. 



CONSOLIDATION ACT. 



The difficulty of administering the law on our subject is 

 enormously increased by the effect of the slipshod system 

 which has been recently pursued in the enactment of it. 

 Instead of repealing all former Acts relating to the subject, 

 after having collected all the portions of them which it was 

 desirable to adopt, and inserting them in the new Act, so 

 as to make an entirely new departure for salmon fishing 

 legislation, the framers of the Act of 1862 contented them- 

 selves with simply making it an amendment of the Acts 

 previously in force, whatever these are. That this was 

 their deliberate intention is apparent from the preamble of 

 the Act. The result is that there is still in force a large 

 number of old Acts, or portions of Acts, which are more or 

 less inapplicable to the circumstances of the present day, 

 and a state of confusion and uncertainty is produced in the 

 minds of all concerned as to what is really the law on 

 many points. The legal maxim, " Ignorantia juris nemi- 

 nem excusat," which is usually strictly applied, ought to 

 be suspended or reversed in this case, until matters are put 

 upon a more satisfactory footing. 



One would have thought that when, in a period of 157 

 years, there had only been one statute passed on the 

 subject, and that one 34 years old, the necessity of an 

 entirely new departure would have been the first thing to 

 strike the Government. There is the less excuse for the 

 error when we remember that the English Act, which had 

 been passed immediately before, repealed all prior statutes. 

 The first thing, therefore, now to be done is to pass a Con- 

 solidation Act, complete in itself, and wiping out of the 

 statute book all previous legislation relating to salmon 

 fisheries in Scotland, including the Acts of 1862 and 1868. 



