78 SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 



ter justice as well as law, we cannot sanction your conduct. 

 We cannot consider, as law, a quibble which has, on the very- 

 face of it, and by your own showing, no other object than to 

 cover theft ; and it would be contrary to all justice to allow 

 you, and if you, all others, to appropriate to yourselves, with- 

 out a right, what had been possessed for time immemorial, by 

 the owners of the rivers under their grants from the Crown — 

 to allow you, by your united efforts, in fact, to deprive them 

 of their properties altogether. Every principle of honour, of 

 justice, of sound law, and even of morality, forbids it ; and 

 when a judge loses all sense of morality, and covers an act of 

 dishonesty by a trick, he loses all title to respect. Go home, 

 then, sir, and be satisfied with what you have a right to, with- 

 out appropriating to yourself what you have Twt a right to. 

 Learn a lesson of honesty : at all events expect not that we 

 will do your dirty work for you." But no judge said this : 

 moral judges, who could put on black caps to sentence to the 

 gallows the unfortunate crurdnal, pressed, perhaps, by necessity, 

 to appropriate to himself what he had no right to, appear un- 

 intentionally to shield the same offence in another, by a miser- 

 able quibble, and even find him entitled to COSTS ! Accord- 

 ingly, the tacksman of the upper fisheries is told, " The Crown 

 might, if it pleased, deprive you of all the fish — of your pro- 

 perty — of your vested rights : and if the Crown could do it, so 

 may the defender, for the defender does nothing but what the 

 Crown might do, if it pleased. You have no redress : you must 

 put up with your loss : you cannot help yourself : the loss of 

 your property is a matter wholly jus tertii to you, with which 

 you have no manner of concern : such is the law, which is the 

 essence oi justice." Now, suppose our tacksman were disposed 

 to return to the inventor a dose of his own law, and, aided by 

 a posse of his fishermen, as a press-gang, were to carry him on 

 board one of his Majesty's tenders, in Leith Eoads, and then 

 say to him, " His Majesty has a right to impress men into his 

 service as seamen ; I have done nothing to you but what his 

 Majesty might do if he pleased, and his Majesty alone can find 

 fault with me for it. You have no redress : you cannot help 

 yourself ; the matter is wholly jus tertii to you. Such is the 



