RIPARIAN BIGHTS IN ENGLISH COLONIES. 49 



mountains. The snows and rains fall as a rule on public land, and are as 

 much the pi'operty of the nonriparian as of the riparian landowner. They 

 belong also to the Government, which has no direct interest in either class 

 of lands, but Avhich is vitally concerned in securing the largest and best use 

 of the State's resources. The preservation of the forests upon which the 

 perennial character of the water supply depends is not looked after by the 

 riparian proprietors alone. It would be an incalculable gain to the State if 

 all the rights to water could be measured by the same test — that of actual 

 beneficial use. But if this can not be done then riparian rights should be 

 made inseparable from riparian lands. If it is good law and good policy 

 to give the present owner of riparian lands a right in the stream bordering 

 his land, it is equally good law and good policy to protect the man who may 

 own the same land fifty years hence in the same right. This can not be 

 done if riparian rights are held to be transferable. The recognition of the 

 power to sell these rights is contrary to the teachings of experience in 

 either arid or humid countries. These sales in California have already 

 helped to create monopolies in water, and made it an insti-ument of specula- 

 tive extortion not permitted by the worst of the State laws where rights are 

 acquired by appropriation alone. In any event every individual right should 

 be defined in some way, and its volume, or the land to which it attaches, 

 determined by some systematic procedure, so that on every stream those 

 interested may know how much of the water supply is controlled and how 

 much remains to be acquired by others. It would seem that a statute to 

 provide for this could be enacted, which would be at least as effective as the 

 slow evolution of a doctrine by piecemeal through court decisions. The 

 subject is of so much importance, and there exists such wide difference of 

 opinion among those interested regarding what can be done and what should 

 be done, that some of the legislation of other in-igated lands whose laws ai*e 

 borrowed from England are given below. 



LEGISLATION KESPECTING RIPAMAN BIGHTS IN ENGLISH COLONIES. 



CANADA. 



Before any iiiigation legislation whatever was enacted the Canadian 

 government sent a commissioner to the western part of the United States to 

 make a study of our laws. Upon his return this commissioner presented a 

 report, in which the first suggestion was: 



First. The total suppression of all riparian rights in water, so that the same, being vested in the 

 Crown, may be distributed under well-considered government control for the benefit of the greatest 

 possible number. 



23856— No. 100—01 i 



