agitators, of which M. Mustoxidi is the acknowledged leader at Corfu, and the 'Ionian' of the Daily News is the proclaimed agent in London, for it does not represent the opinions of a hundred individuals in the islands. But there is still another point of view in which this question should be regarded. The mischief produced by the present state of the Ionian Islands is not confined within their own narrow limits. The Ionian journals, holding up England and Englishmen almost with one voice to ridicule or execration, have been disseminated throughout the Levant. They are read at Athens, Smyrna, and Constantinople. The existence of such unparalleled licence in a British dependency is calculated to damage seriously the prestige of British power and energy, for Orientals rarely separate the idea of government from that of monarchical authority, and invariably ascribe to fear or imbecility all concessions yielded to violence and clamour. The respect earned for our name by the vigour of other times, or other spheres, is dangerously counteracted by the weakness of English policy in the Ionian Islands. No government can afford to be openly set at defiance for any length of time by its own dependents.

energy, and judgment-and so long as he is fortified by the firm support of his official chief in England, we may indulge the hope that further open collisions between the executive and the legislature will be avoided. Still it must not be forgotten that all those who-whether natives or foreigners-know the islands best, are unanimous in decrying the constitutional organization of 1849. Even disaffected Ionians for the most part allow that the working government of Sir T. Maitland, or even a pure autocracy in the hands of an English governor, would be far preferable, in a choice of evils, to the rash system of Lord Seaton; while the English party (that is, the principal landed proprietors and the chief public servants) support Sir H. Ward's views as to a modification of the press laws, and the abolition of the ballot. But, difficult and dangerous as is reaction in any shape, a piecemeal re-action is the most difficult and dangerous of all. The leading principles of the Constitution of 1817 have been abandoned, and no further experiments at patching it up are calculated to produce any permanent good. More over, no power likely to act wisely and impartially has any legal right to interfere. The Imperial Parliament cannot constitutionally legislate for this singularly anomalous dependency; and we strongly suspect that it will be discovered sooner or later that no Ionian Assembly, as at present constituted, can be depended upon for sound practical legislation in times of popular excitement, or on any questions which involve feelings of Greek nationality. The public men in the islands are, with few exceptions, sincere and zealous in nothing but in aggrandizing themselves and in supplanting their rivals. They seem, indeed, singularly destitute of that constitutional morality which Mr. Grote declares (in language peculiarly appropriate to the late crisis at 4. Annual Reports of the Commissioners of

Corfu) to be the indispensable condition of a Government at once free and peaceable, since any powerful and obstinate minority

ART. III.-1. An Inquiry into the Legisla tion of the Salmon and Sea Fisheries. By Herbert F. Hore, Esq., Dublin. 8vo. 1830.

2.

3.

Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry on the Irish Fisheries. 1836.

Report from the Committee on the Inland Fisheries and Navigation of Ireland. 1849.

Public Works as to the Fisheries of Ireland. 1843-50.

may render the working of free institutions THE value of the genus salmo to the genus impracticable, without being strong enough homo is exhibited under several agreeable to conquer ascendancy for themselves' (Hist., phases. Any person who is owner of a chap. 31).

To conclude the polity of 1849 is odious to all the three sections into which the Ionians are divided. The partizans of British protection, as the best guarantee of social order and tranquillity, are naturally averse to it; the Greek annexationists, or Rizospasta, revile it bitterly. It is unnecessary to speak of the little knot of semiVenetian and doctrinaire intriguers and

*Some of the most virulent soi-disant GREEKS of

good salmon-fishery, as well as of broad this faction bear common Venetian names, such as Dandola, Zambelli, &c. A Smith or Brown in England might just as plausibly pretend to Norman descent. Our Hansard represents Mr. Joseph Hume as, if they went to any part of the Levant or Asia Mion 5th April last, telling the House of Commons that nor, they would find that the Ionians were sharp, clever men, and much superior to any other class of Italians.' We suspect that these Panhellenic agitathat he considers them to be Italians. Besides, in tors will disown their champion, when they discover the southern islands, the majority of the inhabitants, as we have already seen, are of Greek descent.

acres, contemplates in his banker's book, an additional credit of some hundreds sterling, his aquatic rental. Those who favour the pastime of the rod consider a royal salmon as their noblest prize. The capture of this vigorous fish with so slight an implement must, indeed, be a spirit-stirring sport. | Its votaries sometimes even venture for it into Ireland

'amidst O'Rourkes, O'Tooles, Or where Dick Martin rules [eheu!] The wilds of Connemara.'

6

For its delights we have literary authorities enough-from the amiable gossip of Walton to the elegant disquisition of Davy and the enthusiastic eloquence of Wilson. Its calm and cheerful pleasures consoled the ambitious Raleigh when banished from courtwere sufficient to draw away Cotton, the poet and voluptuary, from the gay world, and to allure Paley from his easy chair and desk. All epicures are agreed as to the salmon. Mine host of the 'Star and Garter' is sure to grace the board with a fair proportion of the venison of the waters:' while côtelettes de saumon à l'Indienne form not the least telling plat at Blackwall or Greenwich. The fish often of old made his appearance in a preserved or 'kippered' state-and he is still a favourite in that guise. We doubt not it is he who is gratefully alluded to by Archbishop Laud in a certain epistle to Lord Strafford, of Sept. 1638, when the viceroy (well known to be awake to the subject of fisheries) was resting from the cares of government at his new residence in the Wicklow woods:

'I find by your letters you are gone a hunting; I hope you will find time to go a fishing too, for I mean to be a very bold beggar, and desire you to send me some more of the dried fish-(I do not know what you call it)-which you sent me the last year; it was the best that ever I tasted. Do not think to stop my mouth with more of your hung beef from Yorkshire, which was as hard as the very horn the old

runt wore when she lived.'

commodity. Stainhurst mentions that the fisheries of Lough Neagh, and of the noble northerne river, the Banne, complain more often for bursting of their nets with the over great take of fish, than for anie want.' It is testified in a collection of genealogies among the MSS. at Lambeth that O'Donell is the second best lord in Ulster, and the best lord of fishe in Ireland, and he exchangeth fishe allwayes with foreign merchants for wyne, by which his call in other countryes -the kinge of fishe.' The last O'Donell, Earl of Tyrconnel, before abandoning his country in 1607, proclaimed, as among his most grievous injuries, the being 'despoiled by the English of his valuable fisheries.' In 1610 the Foyle and Bann were let by the London Company of Adventurers' for one thousand marks yearly: Sir James Hamilton, who had a claim on that fishery, offered to farm it at 8007. per annum. Lord Strafford writes, in 1638, that the Foyle produced to the Crown that year two hundred and forty tons of salmon, and that the yearly rent used to be 1000l. Although the value of money has diminished nearly ten-fold, the rent paid in the year 1835 for the three great rivers, the Foyle, Bann, and Moy, only amounted to 12507. Spenser commemo rates the fair Suir, in which are thousand salmons bred.' The full name of Cahir, the Earl of Glengall's seat on that river, is Cahir-duna-iascaigh, the castle of the fishabounding fort. The Duke of Ormond told Evelyn that salmon were so plentiful in the Irish streams that they were hunted with dogs.

From an early period the article_was largely exported, in a salted state, to England, and still more abundantly to Spain, where it was in request for fast days. The export trade assumed additional importance at the beginning of the present century, in consequence of the introduction of Scotch stake-nets, and bag-nets.' These nets were placed in the entrances and lower portions of rivers, and their use, as opposed to the ordinary method of fishing with boats, and moveable draught nets, had the effect of bringing the trade into fewer hands. The trade subsequently received a new stimulus from the facilities afforded for the rapid conveyance of the commodity, in its fresh and more inviting state, by means of steam-vessels and railways. And here it may be conjectured, that the necessity for disposing quickly of an article of food so perishable as fish, together with the fluctuation of its value according to the quantity taken, are the causes of that vehemence and acerbity of language which the dealers-even though of the fair sex-employ at Billingsgate: a style

of elocution that existed among the same class in ancient Greece, and which the Athenian lawgivers in vain attempted to restrain.

adds M. Erman, 'it is equally certain that the fisheries of the Ostyaks round about were thereby seriously damaged.' This abstraction of fish caused in fact an absolute famine in the interior. M. Erman says:

To those unacquainted with piscatorial mysteries it may seem strange that a controversy should arise as to the equity of the fish-eating tribes of the Irtuish and Obi; and it 'Russian civilization has reduced to misery the use of any device for capturing a fish; but must undoubtedly be expected that the rethere are few subjects of a more doubtful markable migrations of the fish up the fresh and complicated character, which involve waters will hereafter be known only from tramore varied considerations, or are more dif- dition. The official agents, to whom the superficult to legislate upon, than the Irish river intendence of this country has been confided, fisheries. No less than thirty-one statutes have been always perplexed by the difficulty of have been enacted for their regulation but never was so rare and felicitous an expereconciling the conflicting interests in this case; within the last three centuries. So vitupe- dient for the welfare of the land explicitly rative is the language in some of these acts enounced, as that contained in the still unexethat our ancient senators seem to have cuted scheme of M. Karnilof, who proposed to caught the contagion of the subject. The the government at St. Petersburg that it should erectors of weirs are reprehended by 28th "take into its immediate possession all the Henry VIII. as 'persons having respect only to Russians for then," he observes, "the valuable fisheries on the Obi, and lease them only to their own wilfulnesse, singular com- harmless and amiable Ostyaks, to whom the moditie, and benefit:' and are again rebuk-sand-banks belong by inheritance, would at once ed, 10th Car. I., for their 'greedy appetites be relieved from the anxiety of retaining posand insatiable desires.' Over and over session of them, and nothing more would be again Commissions have been instituted, heard of their complaints of local injuries done and Committees have sat, to investigate the to thern. The fish-eating inhabitants might dispute as to how, where, and when, salmon ought to be killed. The Commissioners of Inquiry in 1835 were thoroughly mystified by the contradictory nature of the evidence offered, as well respecting the natural history of the fish, as the tendency of the several practical points in debate.' The occult habits of the salmon, and the varying circumstances of different rivers, either in hydrographical formation, or in temperature, may account largely for such discrepancies; but we must remember that the laws for regulating methods and seasons are sought to be guided or altered by these statements. We have of late had to thank our ichthyological savans for some half dozen of formal essays on the salmon, and there are now twice as many Blue-books on the same topic; so that this inscrutable animal may exclaim with Duke Vincentio,

'Volumes of Reports

then learn to support themselves on the nuts of quadrupeds; so engaged, they would not be trou the Siberian pine, or by catching birds and bled with competitors, and might enjoy tranquillity of mind.”

The antagonistic claimants to the 'property' of salmon in a large Irish river may be divided into four classes: 1st. those employing stationary nets at the mouth and along the coast:-2nd. the 'cot-men' fishing in the tideway with drift and seine nets:3rd. the solid weir, at the junction of the freshwater and the tideway :-4th. the landowners in the freshwater districts, who are confined mostly to the use of rod and line. Every fishing-station along a river is in point of fact an evil to parties who fish more inland :—and it must be noted that they who are most able to protect the breeding fish will always have the least opportunity of reaping the eventful benefit of their care.

Run with these false and most contrarious quests Let the law do ever so much for the 'ProtecUpon my doings!

The recently-published travels of M. Er man in the northern Asiatic continent afford some curious particulars of the great river fisheries of salmon and sturgeon in Siberia. Russian traders annually resort to the neighbourhood of the most productive sandbanks in the estuaries, where they pay the inhabitants for permission to erect their nets, some of which are 800 feet long. So enormous is the take that more than one of these companies have recently realized profit to the amount of 25,000l. in one season; but,'

tionist' interest, still no large proportion of the fish could ever reach them: the lion's share will be devoured lower down, because salmon 'hang in the tideway' during the dry months, and do not ascend in considerable numbers until the first floods, as the fence time approaches.

The commissioners of 1835 were as much perplexed by the difficulty of reconciling the conflicting interests,' as were the Russian officials in Siberia. Their Instructions,' drawn up by the present Earl of Carlisle, pointed out that 'the propriety of the use of the Scotch stake-net, against which there is a

Legislation, from the days of King John to the close of the last reign, was directed to the restraining of any exclusive methods. of taking salmon. The regulation of inland fisheries occupies two prominent clauses in Magna Charta. That ground-work of our liberty was signed on the island of Runnymede, in the royal river of England, and the freedom of our waters, any more than of our lands and forests, was not overlooked. The monarch surrendered his cherished preroga tive of 'putting rivers in fence' for the sake of his own sport, and it was ordained that no private right of fishery should be assumed,

weirs were ordered to be removed from the Thames and Medway, and throughout England, except along the coast of the sea The Great Charter was extended to Ireland; and, in addition to its provisions, a special Act was passed in that kingdom, 10th Car. I., prohibiting the taking of salmon by any sort of standing net.

strong prejudice in Ireland, is deserving con-, portation. Were another commission to be sideration. These nets are undoubtedly appointed they would find evidence enough most productive; but it is asserted that that this ancient branch of industry has been they exhaust the supply of fish to an extent greatly injured, nay all but destroyed, by that may threaten a material diminution in the fixed nets, which now hand over the the stock for many years.' The document riches of the water to the owners of the land. also suggests that in the rivers, the construction of eel and salmon weirs will form an interesting subject of inquiry; and whether they also, in their present form, and being practically of unlimited operation in season and situation, may not be found too destructive.' The Commissioners, however, did not find either of these subjects interesting; they soon became weary of the weirs, slipped through the meshes of the nets, and wound up their report hastily, complaining of the contradictory nature of the evidence, and declaring that, in their belief, 'fixed bases for legislation as to these rivers could only, if at all, be attained by a lengthy and philo- to the damage of the public. All open sophical course of independent investigations.' This they had not time for :-so, recollecting that a select committee of the House of Commons had recently reported on the British fisheries, they suggest placidly and profoundly that the natural history of the animal being everywhere similar, a similar course of injurious practices is every where found to require a similar legal inter- The reason is obvious why a 'cruivefishing ference for the protection of the breed- weir'-a solid dam built across the stream whatever laws are requisite for the British with 'cruives' or box-traps through the rails salmon fisheries will be found generally suf- of which the water flows-must take a large ficient for those of Ireland.' In reviewing proportion of the salmon. The fish is certhis conclusion, we must first of all observe tain to ascend sooner or later in order to that the Commissioners ignored the exist- shed her spawn in the upper waters; as Paence of the public right of piscary. They ley says, 'she suffers no surmountable obmake no allusion to it! Yet this right, if we stacle to oppose her progress,' and in her do at all recognize it, makes the question of effort to pass up she rushes into the fatal permitting the use of fixed nets far more trap. But it is not so easy to explain briefcomplicated, than if the rival interests of ly the manner in which stationary nets act, different landed proprietors on the same or the reasons why they take so great a river were alone concerned, as is the case in quantity of fish as they are found to do. A Scotland. Nor can it be denied that in Ire-Scotch weir' is composed of a strong and land the public right of fishing for salmon on the coasts, and in the larger portion of the tideways of the principal rivers, had always been asserted; or that when fish were abundant, the subsistence of a larger number of families was mainly secured from this resource. The right is exercised outside the mouth of nearly every river, by hauling with draught nets: and in dry seasons, when salmon do not enter the rivers readily, this mode of fishing was very productive to the poor persons who followed it. It was proved before the Select Committee that upwards of two thousand men fished in the tidal portions of the Waterford rivers before the Act of 1842 was passed, and that, in that very year, from 17,000l. to 18,000l. worth of salmon had been sent into Waterford for ex

long net, stretched out on upright poles, which have been driven into the sandy shore, or mud bank, in the estuary of a river, from high to low water mark, and reaching as far as the edge of the deep channel. A bagnet' is also a long and strong net, stretched out by means of anchors, attached to the shore end by ropes, and suspended perpendicularly by corks and buoys. The stakeweir is operative only while the tide is in: the bag-net takes fish at all hours of the tide, not being laid bare at low water and has also this advantage over its inland rival, that the salmon meet it sooner. The general belief as to the course taken by salmon on entering a river is, that they coast along the shore, both to luxuriate in the fresh water that comes in from various little streams,