FISHERMEN AND FISHERIES. 147 



engine of a kind which, more than six hundred years later, 

 Parliament passed an Act to abolish, as completely as 

 equity would allow, solely in the interests of the fisheries. 



At the same time this "wear" clause in the Charter 

 involved a principle which a previous clause had more 

 distinctly specified, and which may be conveniently referred 

 to here as showing the important rights that are at stake in 

 the relations of the State towards fisheries and fishermen 

 viz. the question of the public right of fishing. 



The " kidelli " were the outward and visible sign of the Public versus 



PrivateRights. 



encroachment of private rights upon public liberties. The 

 Crown, since the Norman Conquest, had introduced the 

 principle that all land was its property, as distinguished 

 from that of the community ; and this principle was being 

 rapidly extended, both in theory and practice, to the rivers. 

 Just as the Crown had granted away forfeited lands, so it 

 was beginning to make grants of waters with their rights of 

 fishing, &c. ; and the grantees were in the habit of setting 

 up fishing-weirs in the exercise of their newly-acquired 

 right. These weirs, as has been seen, were a serious 

 obstacle to navigation, and, while insisting on their removal 

 in navigable rivers, the barons at Runnymede also stipu- 

 lated that no further appropriation of public waters should 

 be permitted. Hence the provision in Henry III.'s con- 

 firmation of Magna Charta that "nulla riparia de cetero 

 defendantur nisi ilia quae fuerunt in defense tempore 

 Henrici regis avi nostri, per eadem loca et eosdem terminos 

 sicut esse consueverunt tempore suo." 



Thus the distinction between the public and private 

 rights of fishing was recognised, which has ever since been 

 observed in English fishery legislation, and which has 

 guided the State in its relation with the fisheries to such an 

 extent that, while the prohibition of fixed engines for the 



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