SECTION IV. 



RIGHTS OP PARTIES. 



" Quel est done cette sauve-garde des lois qui laisse la fortune d'un cltoyon 4 la 

 merol de quiconque veut I'attaquer dans les formes juridiques ? " 



L'Sermite de la Guiane. 



We shall now take a glance at the rights of the proprietors 

 of lands situated on the coasts to salmon-fishings, which they 

 conceive entitle them to intercept the salmon in their progress 

 to the rivers by every means in their power, and give them 

 an EQUAL title to the fishery as the owners of the rivers them- 

 selves. 



The rights of the owners of the rivers to the salmon of those 

 rivers are founded upon the universally acknowledged prin- 

 ciple, that a right to property carries a right to its produce — 

 the very ground upon which the proprietors of lands on the 

 coasts claim a right to the corn and sheep produced upon their 

 estates. Salmon are not like animals which are ferce naturce, 

 and belong to no particular property. Each river, as has been 

 shown, possesses its own variety of the species, which belongs 

 to itself exclusively, and which is forced by instinct to return 

 to it, and to no other river. The natural right of the owner of 

 such river to its salmon, therefore, is just the same as the right 

 of the owner of a bee-hive to its bees, or of a dove-cot to its 

 pigeons. They constitute, in fact, as Erskine says, his estate. 

 If there were no fishings except in the rivers, each proprietor 

 of a river would get his own salmon, the produce of his own 

 property, and none else, for none else would enter it. The 

 proprietors of the rivers would thus have every encouragement, 

 like the owners of land-estates, to improve their properties, by 



