140 SALMON-FISHERY OF SCOTLAND. 



too gross to rec[iiire comment ; and we do not think it likely 

 that any great public measure which rests upon a basis of 

 injustice can be ultimately successful. Injustice is always 

 odious, whether it proceed from an iadividual, or from a body 

 of iadividuals :* from a Scotch court of law, or from the British 

 Parliament, or, ia short, come from where it may. In the pre- 

 sent instance, instead of benefiting the public or the fishery, it 

 has a direct contrary effect, since it evidently injures both. 

 We therefore trust that, under the existing enlightened admin- 

 istration, in whose minds we believe honour — that rarity in 

 public men — prevails over the jobbing system by which the 

 country, to the disgrace of the age, has been so long governed, 

 and which has polluted all its institutions, particularly in Scot- 

 land, where pubKc virtue seems to have been swept from the 

 face of the country (if, indeed, it ever existed in it), some pub- 

 lic-spirited individual in Parliament will move, at an early 

 period, for the repeal of the present Act, and get another, 

 founded in common sense, substituted in its room. 



Why do our legislators suppose the Creator made early and 

 late rivers ? Was it that they should be put upon a footing ? 

 And does reptile man think he can alter the order established 

 by Him ? Every man of sense must see at once that the sys- 

 tem of Nature ought to be followed ? The only question is, how 

 is this to be done ? The grand evil in the salmon-fishery is 

 the multiplicity of fishings, which begets so many contending 

 interests, and makes each individual pursue a selfish system of 

 destruction incompatible with the improvement, on a great 

 scale, of the fishery. If anything could justify the violation 

 of private rights for the benefit of the -public, the owners of 

 minor fishings should be made to sell their rights for a just 

 equivalent, in order to concentrate the fishery as much as pos* 

 sible. If a whole river belonged to one individual, he might 

 do with it as he liked. In such a river there should be 

 no close-time. The owner of it would take care to keep 

 it at all times full of breeding fish. He might make it 

 like a game preserve, in which immense quantities would be 



* We think to commit downright injustice is ultra vires, as the lawyers say, 

 of any human tribunal. 



