SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. " 81 



power of creating such servitudes, still it is evident that they 

 do not exist, and cannot exist, until the Crown creates them, 

 or brings them into existence ; could anything, therefore, be 

 more absurd than to say, that Houston was exercising, in the 

 room of the Crown, a right of fisliing, which the Crown had 

 not yet created, or brought into existence ? 



Let the owners of the salmon-rivers in Scotland only look at 

 the coTbsequences of the law, as laid down in this case, and un- 

 fortunately affirmed recently in the Court of Appeal. A man 

 may have been possessed, under a grant from the Crown, of a 

 salmon-fishing in a river, for time immemorial, with a free and 

 unobstructed run to the fish from the mouth of the river to his 

 fishing ; and not only, we are told, may the Crown, notwith- 

 standing his immemorial possession, but his immediate neigh- 

 bour below him, who has no right of fishing, may now, without 

 any authority from the Cro'WTi, sweep the whole river in front 

 of his fishing, within a few yards of it, and absolutely extiuguisH 

 it, and he will have no title to prevent him. Even a man 

 possessed of only ten furlongs or ten yards of land, worth not 

 perhaps five shillings a-year, near the mouth of a river, may 

 intercept the whole of the fish as they enter, and thus ruin the 

 fishery of the river ; and though unpossessed of a particle of 

 legal right, may transfer to himself the whole fishing property 

 of the river, worth perhaps ^500 or .£"1500 a^year, and the 

 legal owner, thus robbed of his property, will have no title to 

 prevent it. In the same way, should a parcel of fishermen 

 form themselves into a gang, and have wherewith to purchase 

 nets, they may, as a fishing speculation, in consequence of 

 this new law, sweep the whole waters in front of the estab- 

 lished fisheries, from one end of the kingdom to the other, 

 and if they pay a trifle to the owners of lands, to prevent 

 molestation on their part, neither the owners nor the tacks- 

 men of the fisheries will have a title to prevent them. In 

 short, all protection is at once removed from fishing property 

 all over Scotland. 



That such law, which carries the grossest injustice on the 

 face of it, should be affirmed in the Court of Appeal, and 

 affirmed, too, by such a man as Lord -Brougham, is to us of all 



F 



