No. CCXXVII.

VOL. XXXVIII

WE

purpose here to enter into some inquiry respecting the Fisheries, both sea and inland, and the laws affecting them; and we shall, at the same time, take a general view of the leading features of a Bill lately introduced into Parliament with reference to the Fisheries in Ireland, and now pending. Year after year this subject is acquiring more interest; the sea fisheries languish in a state of almost total neglect; and the salmon fisheries are falling into decay under the operation of laws framed ostensibly for their improvement. The inland, or salmon fisheries, therefore, will form the first subject of investigation; but before we conclude we shall extend the sphere of our inquiries, and discuss those measures which we conceive will be necessary for the full development of the sea and sea-coast fisheries-sources of industry and wealth which, although now drooping from neglect and apathy, are yet well worthy of national consideration.

As an article of food, salmon is becoming each year less plentiful in our markets; it can fairly be asserted that, with the exception of about two months at the end of the season, this fish may be considered a luxury, only attainable by the rich. During the greater part of the season the liege subjects of our lady the Queen are as effectually debarred from partaking of it, as if some sumptuary law were in force prohibiting its production on their tables.

The great increase also in the value of salmon, as an article of commerce, notwithstanding facilities of steam conveyance, and the consequent extension of markets, is referrible, we would say,

VOL, XXXVIII.—NO. CCXXVII,

solely to the decreased supply; but whether we make the inquiry on the banks of the Shannon or the Foyle, or in the rich emporiums of Liverpool or London, we find the price but too true an index to the progressive scarcity of the fish. The matter, therefore, demands not only an inquiry into the cause, but the application of the remedy, if the latter shall be found to be within the control of the Legislature. Unfortunately the British Parliament has before its view the experience and the fate of its own salmon fisheries; these have declined away, and are almost extinct. The decadence of England is not a visionary speculation as regards its salmon, but a sober fact; indeed, England may now be said to depend altogether upon Ireland and Scotland for her supply of this valuable article, and to Ireland the export of it is of much commercial importance, from the increased facility of transport from all the great fisheries. Salmon now caught in the Shannon, or in the Bann, or Foyle, or on our extreme western shore, can be produced in every part of England, and on the most fastidious London tables, in a state of freshness and perfection tô satisfy, even the aspirations of the most distinguished artistes.

The circumstances here detailed, it will be seen, operate highly to the advantage of Ireland in a commercial point of view. Our facilities of communication with Liverpool give us a complete command of the chief English markets, and, with timely attention, there is reason to hope that our salmon fisheries, for many distant years to come, will be adequate not only to the supply of our

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own demands at home, but also to contribute largely to the supply of England with that much-esteemed fish.

But if this timely attention be not afforded, our salmon fisheries will decline and dwindle away, as those of England have already disappeared, and a long-cherished and important resource of this country will depart from amongst us. To avert this national misfortune, for such it may fairly be considered, a Bill to consolidate and amend the laws relating to the Irish fisheries was brought in last Session to the House of Commons by the member for Donegal county (Mr. Conolly), and we shall now proceed to a general examination of that measure, and the amendments of the law which it proposes, and essay as much as in us lies to awaken attention to a matter comparatively of much importance.

In the year 1842 a Bill was introduced into Parliament by the then Government, and was speedily passed into a law, without due notice or consideration, and without that calm and careful examination which so intricate a subject manifestly required. A very different course has been pursued on the present occasion. After much discussion and investigation of the subject out of doors, Mr. Conolly produced his Bill in the House of Commons on the 2nd of June last, when it passed the first reading. It has been printed by order of the House, and has been circulated very generally throughout Ireland, with a view to a full consideration of its provisions previous to next Session. This bespeaks a fair and honourable course, and shows withal confidence in a good cause. The country is thus, as it were, invited to offer objections to a measure which is believed by the promoters to be sound in principle, and calculated to restore the salmon fisheries to their former prosperous condition.

Had this course been adopted with reference to the Fishery Act of 1842, the country would not have had to deplore the prostration and ruin of those fisheries. The errors contained in that measure were so palpable, that had sufficient time been given, they would have exploded spontaneously. The examination of a few of those errors will be ancillary to our present purpose.

First. It was maintained (and the

enactments quickly followed), that by extending the means of capturing salmon, an increased aggregate supply would be obtained.

Secondly. It was propounded that the ancient mode, which had existed for ages, of capturing salmon by fixed engines in rivers, was a monopoly, and was prejudicial to the fisheries at large; and the remedy proposed was the legalization of a new monopoly by fixtures in the sea and tideway, and thus the last state of monopoly was made worse than the first.

This leads us into a short digression concerning the history of the ancient charter and patent weirs of this kingdom. This branch of the subject is discussed with great ability and research in a work recently published by Mr. Herbert Francis Hore, whose Inquiry respecting the legislation and control of the salmon fisheries, and into the subject of the fisheries generally, has thrown so much light upon the subject. The unfortunate state of our salmon fisheries seems to have induced Mr. Hore to take up the consideration of the subject, which he has done with great ability, and with the utmost impartiality, being, as he informs us, in no way connected with fisheries. No doubt, at a remote period, a necessity arose for a fixed mode of capturing salmon in our rivers for the supply of markets, or the ordinary requirements of the age; and the imagination must be vivid, which can conjecture a time when the rude angling tackle of our ancestors was regarded as a means adequate to the supply of the public wants. We learn from undoubted records, that at a very early period of civilisation, purprestures, or weirs, were used in this country for the capture of salmon, and were, for many centuries, subjected to legislative control; hence the origin and the title of the salmon weirs or great salmon fisheries of this kingdom; they existed certainly at the time when the Danes held sway in Ireland, and were subsequently confirmed or granted by the Crown, by charter or patent to corporations or others, who had acquired territorial rights. In this manner rights of several fishery were founded, and a large proportion of those fisheries fell into the hands of monastic institutions, or were annexed to abbeys and other religious houses. The weirs of Lismore, of Gill Abbey, and many

others, were amongst the ancient possessions of the Church. The Abbots of Mellifont possessed three weirs upon the Boyne, and upon a writ of Monstrans de droit, in the reign of Edward III., their title was held good. St. Mary's Abbey at Dublin enjoyed a special grant of fishery in the waters of the Avon Liffey; and in the year 1220 the lordly Prior of Kilmainham had to submit to an inquiry respecting his title to the structure which forms the present Islandbridge weir. At Limerick, in the recent trials respecting the title of the fishery, and great lax-weir, now the property of the Limerick Corporation, the title was deduced from a charter granted by King John, in the year 1202, to William de Bradosa. These, not to mention numerous other instances, will be quite sufficient to carry back the title of those obnoxious purprestures, at all events, into a pretty remote antiquity.

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But it was objected in 1842, that these charter weirs and ancient fisheries, being situated in the tideway, were prohibited by Magna Charta, or were illegal at common law. We cannot admit either of these propositions. The Kidel prohibited by Magna Charta was an open wear," and was evidently an engine of a transitory nature, used as a fixture in the tidal parts of large rivers (as instanced in the Thames and Medway), which caused a manifest obstruction to navigation; but the patent or charter weirs in Ireland, which are solid structures, are, for the most part, situated at the very top of the tideway. Great jealousy was always entertained with respect to obstructions in the tidal parts of rivers, where the sea ebbs and flows, but the position of those ancient weirs was very carefully chosen, since we find, in almost every case, they are constructed in situations where obstruction to the navigation of the sea or tideway could not by possibility occur; we might instance the Lismore salmon-weir, now the property of the Duke of Devonshire, which is situated at least two miles above the tideway: the great salmon-fishery at Ballyshannon is formed by a ledge of rocks at the upper extremity of the tideway, where nature herself prohibited navigation; and we believe all the salmon-weirs, extending across rivers, were structed above, or near the extremity of, the tideway, and were founded on

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fords or ledges of rocks, which were themselves barriers to navigation. We have had opportunities, casually, to observe, that so nicely was this question, as regards the tideway, adjusted at the original formation of some of these weirs, that the spring-tide will reach within an inch of the sill of the sluices which is imbedded in the solid rock, and no tide that has ever been observed has surpassed that inch. It would appear that this critical construction, and the selection of the site above the tideway for these permanent and solid obstructions, were adopted at a remote period to accommodate the original structure to the requirements of the common law; be this as it may, no question can arise that those weirs and salmon-fisheries can deduce a title more ancient in its origin and unbroken in possession, than, perhaps, any other species of property in the kingdom.

A few ancient stake or head-weirs, in localities carefully selected (where no injury or obstruction to navigation could occur), also formed a species of fixed property in fisheries. The origin of these, also, is carried back to a very remote period; it seems indeed to have been the original purpose of the Act of 1842 to legislate for those stake-weirs, and those only. The clause recites that doubts existed with regard to the legality of stake-weirs, and then proceeds to legalize them. These old weirs also were frequently appurtenant to religious houses, and seem to have been used as a substitute for solid weirs in places where the latter could not have been constructed; and their number being very limited, they were not regarded either as an injury to navigation or to the public fishery. They were frequently annexed to monasteries and abbeys-that of Dunbrody for instance, -and had acquired from time and length of possession that sanction and permanency which is the foundation and security of all property.

There is not, perhaps, any branch of our law more intricate than that which relates to salmon fisheries: the intermixture of public with private rights raises some of the nicest questions known to our jurisprudence. Many of these difficulties were adequately met by the old Irish Fishery Acts (repealed in 1842), and a legal chaos has resulted from the change. Abstract legal questions, such as the point at