SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 83 



regard to the rights of the Crown, whatever they may be, it is 

 time enough to try the point when a question with the Crown 

 arises, and which it was entirely and truly /tis tertii in Houston 

 or any other to institute. 



The maxim, then, that there can be no wrong without re- 

 dress, is an error ; since it is now openly and publicly estab- 

 lished as LAW by the highest tribunal in the kingdom, founded 

 in a quibble, that not only may a wrong, and a great wrong, 

 be committed with impunity, but that a man may be even 

 deprived of his whole property by another who has no right 

 to it, and that he will have NO title to eedebss. 



But to continue Houston's case in the Court of Session. 

 When the honest man found that the Court was so well dis- 

 posed towards him, he judged that he might even venture a little 

 farther, and make hay while the sun shined. He had hitherto 

 fished only in the usual way, or with the movable coble-net ; 

 but he now planted fioaed or bag nets, which we have already 

 described as the most destructive of all fishing engines, in the 

 very alvevs or channel of the water, or passage of the fish to 

 the upper fisheries, and which but few fish could escape. A new 

 complaint from the tacksman to the Court was necessarily the 

 consequence of this new aggression, but the Court heard him 

 with the utmost apathy, and would not listen to a word he 

 could say on the subject. The interdict which they had granted 

 in a similar case in the Tay,* they refused to him, and allowed 

 the man who had no right to fish, or to intercept the fish in any 

 way, not only to sweep the channel with movable nets, but even 

 to fill it with the most destructive fixed machinery, with engines 

 which they themselves had interdicted in situations far less 

 destructive elsewhere ; and to continue his operations during 

 the season. How can this refusal of all legal protection, granted 

 to others, be then justified, except by supposing unacquaintance 

 with the subject of the salmon-fishing ? Did the Court suppose 

 that the fish could go through Houston's nets to the upper fish- 

 eries ? Or was the quality of the water their reason for it ? The 

 water at the part in question is in general quite fresh, and never 

 more than brackish, corresponding exactly with the Thames at 

 * Duke of Athol v. Wedderbume, 16th December 1826. 



