I may perhaps be allowed to say what, in my opinion, would remedy
this alarming destruction, particularly as no one hitherto seems
to have devised an efficient preventive. I believe that in 1826
there was an Act of Parliament passed which either repealed or
modified some of the old laws on the subject, and I have also
understood that the good effects of this new law are already
perceptible in Scotland, to which it is exclusively applied. There
was a bill introduced into Parliament in 1825 which was intended
to apply to the whole kingdom; but some of the clauses were so
very objectionable, that if they had been carried they could not
possibly have been enforced without stopping and ruining the
manufactories which were carried on by water-power, and the bill
was consequently abandoned. The first thing to be done is to give
the proprietors on the upper part of the river such an interest in
the fisheries as will make them anxious about the preservation of
the fish in the spawning season; and to accomplish so desirable an
object no one ought to fish or keep a net stretched across a river
for more than twelve hours each day, or from sunrise to sunset;
and every mill-owner ought to be compelled to facilitate the
passage of the fish over his weir by every means consistent with
the proper supply of water to his wheels. At present the fisheries
at the mouths and lower parts of rivers so completely prevent the
access of the fish to the upper parts, that unless there happen to
be high floods, which prevent the fishermen below from keeping
their nets in, the upper proprietors comparatively seldom see any
until the season is at an end. The evidence before the House of
Commons on this point is exceedingly amusing. One person thinks
the upper proprietors have no right to expect any fish, as they
have never paid any consideration for them when they bought their
estates; another states that he pays L7,000 a year to the Duke of