2 PEEFACE. 



It would be ridiculous in one who, from long experience, 

 knows well what we are acquainted with, and what we are 

 not, to attempt to write anything like what may be termed a 

 history of the fish iu question. Nothing, indeed, can be far- 

 ther from his mind than any pretension of the kind ; but, ob- 

 serving the errors which are afloat on the subject, and the 

 great injustice to uidi%aduals which those errors have occasioned 

 in the Courts of Law, to whose decisions the decline of the 

 Salmon Fishery in Scotland may perhaps be more ascribed than 

 to anything else, he has deemed it a sort of duty to those whose 

 properties are in jeopardy, or who may have to stand up in 

 defence of their just rights, to put the following observations 

 upon paper, in the hope that others, better qualified to do jus- 

 tice to the subject, will follow his example, from a similar 

 sense of duty, and that thus a better system may be ultimately 

 brought about. 



It will undoubtedly be deemed a high degree of presumption 

 in one who knows so little of Law, save from the suggestions 

 of common sense, to meddle with it at all. But Law in Scot- 

 land, in nine cases in ten, is nothing else than the mere acci- 

 dental opinion of the Judge, varying with his knowledge of 

 the subject before him ; and, in truth, the administration of 

 justice is so intimately connected with the state of the Salmon 

 Fishery — so interwoven with its very existence — ^that they can- 

 not be separated. The Court of Session holds, in fact, the fate 

 of the fishery in. its hands : it may ruin it by declaring the 

 most destructive modes of fishing legal — for the will of the 

 Court is law ; or it may prevent the possibility of its improve- 

 ment by tearing up the rights of the owners of the rivers in 

 which the Salmon are produced ; for the idea of improving it 

 elsewhere, as will be shown, is all delusion and nonsense. 



We abhor injustice in every shape, from the very bottom of 

 our soul. Where it is the consequence of ignorance, negli- 



