CHAPTER IV. BYE-LAWS. make bye PERHAPS the most important part of the Salmon Power to Fishery Act, 1873, is the power given to boards laws. of conservators to make bye-laws for the better execution of the Salmon Fishery Acts, 1861 to 1873, within their district. Before 1861 various local acts regulated the fisheries in different rivers, but the Salmon Fishery Act, 1861, repealed all these, so far as they related to salmon, and laid down the principle of one fixed law for every river in England and Wales. Although the principle was sound in theory, yet in practice it has been found absolutely necessary that it should be relaxed in some degree. Each river has its own local peculiarities of detail, and these can never be dealt with by general legislation; what is almost vital for one river may prove ruinous for another; and hence for a long time past boards of conservators have been asking for power to adapt the law to the circumstances of their district. This power has at last been granted, and each board can now, within the limits prescribed by the act, modify the general law so as to suit the peculiarities of its district. Great care will be required in framing the byelaws, so as, on the one hand, to draw them to include as much as possible, while, on the other, to General rules as to byelaws. 1. Must be within the special powers of the act. avoid the danger of their being illegal by including too much. The courts always construe bye-laws most strictly against the persons making them; and as the mode of making, that is, drawing and framing, the bye-laws rests with the conservators alone, the secretary of state having no power to alter, only to approve or disapprove the bye-laws when made,-boards of conservators will have to run a double risk of having the bye-laws disallowed: (1) as not complying with the secretary of state's ideas of legality; and, (2) if they comply with that, of not complying with the ideas of the Court of Queen's Bench as to legality. It need hardly be stated that the opinions of the secretary of state and the Court of Queen's Bench are not necessarily coincident; instances are not wanting of bye-laws being allowed by the secretary of state and subsequently held illegal by the Court of Queen's Bench. Before stating how the bye-laws of boards of conservators are to be made, it will be as well to give one or two general rules as to making bye-laws: (1) The bye-laws can only be made under one of the twelve heads authorized by the Salmon Fishery Act, 1873, for when a power is given by statute to make bye-laws for special objects, the body to whom such power is given have no general power to make bye-laws to carry out the act (a); in other words, they must be intra vires; (a) Reg. v. Wood, 5 E. & B. 49; S. C. nom. Reg. v. Rose, 24 L. J. (N. S.), M. C. 130; 1 Jur., N. S. 802. reasonable. (2) A bye-law must be reasonable, otherwise it 2. Must be will be bad, and a bye-law may be quite within the powers of the body making it, but unreasonable and therefore bad. In the case of Elwood v. Bullock (b), a byelaw of a borough provided that no person should erect any booth or place any caravan for the purpose of any show or public entertainment in any public place within the borough without the licence of the mayor; and any licence given at any other time than fair time should be revoked by the mayor, if three householders residing within one hundred yards of the place upon which the caravan was licensed to be set up memorialized the mayor to revoke it. This was held to be an unreasonable bye-law and therefore bad; consistent authorizing it. (3) A bye-law must be consistent with the statute 3. It must be authorizing it. In the case of Dearden V. with the act Townsend (c): Townsend, a passenger on the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, travelled upon the railway with a return ticket to a station beyond that from which the return ticket was taken; on leaving the train, he gave his return ticket and the full local fare between the station for which his ticket was available and the one at which he left the train. The company (b) 13 L. J. (N. S.) M. C. 330. (c) L. R., 1 Q. B. 10. 4. Must not be too general. had made a bye-law to the effect, that no person was allowed to travel on the railway without having obtained a ticket, which he must show when required and give up on leaving the company's premises, and in default either pay the full fare from the place at which the train started or forfeit a sum not exceeding forty shillings. The company refused to take the ticket and the local fare, and demanded the full fare. This Townsend refused to pay, and the company thereupon summoned him for a breach of the bye-law. The Court of Queen's Bench held, that no offence had been committed; that the bye-law only applied to a person wilfully refusing to give up his ticket, not to a person travelling without a ticket and having no intention of defrauding; for if otherwise, it would have been an illegal byelaw, as the Railways Clauses Consolidation Act (c), under which the bye-law was made, had provided for the case of a passenger travelling without a ticket, and the bye-law would have been inconsistent with the act. (4) A bye-law must not include more than the act authorizing it allows. A town council were authorized by statute to make byelaws for the prevention of nuisances; the council made a bye-law imposing a fine on every person who should keep swine within (e) 8 Vict. e. 20. their borough from the 1st of May to the (5) If a bye-law is bad, the confirmation by the secretary of state will not make it good. This was decided in the case of Reg. v. Wood (f) there an information was laid for an infringement of a bye-law, and it was objected that the bye-law was ultra vires; the magistrate held that he could not go into that as the bye-law had been allowed by the secretary of state, and convicted the person for a breach of it. On appeal the |