ther places, to explain the provisions
of the bill which Government introduced at the end of last session
and intend to bring forward again. I have not attended any of
these meetings, but expect he will be at Whalley or Preston
shortly, when we shall hear what he has got to say. The new bill,
as printed last year, does not embody any of the suggestions of
the Worcester meeting; but as I learn from private sources, Mr.
Eden, at the various meetings he has lately attended, has thrown
out various suggestions, some of which are highly objectionable.

For instance, he suggests that the magistrates in quarter sessions
assembled shall have the power to appoint conservators, and that
the conservators shall have the power to expend all the money
raised by subscription in having water-bailiffs to put up fish-
ladders, commencing actions at law in certain cases; and if the
subscriptions are not adequate to defray all these expenses, that
they (the conservators) shall have the power to levy a rate in aid
on the riparian proprietors.

I cannot see how this can be made to work equitably. If the rate
be laid on the extent of frontage to the river, one man may have a
great extent of no value for fishing purposes, another may have
only one pool, so conveniently formed and placed for netting that
he will be able to catch ten times as many fish as the other. Then
how are the fisheries in the estuary and just above tideway to be
valued? They probably take ninety per cent. of all the seasonable
fish. Will they be willing to pay ninety per cent. of the rate?

Again, the college at Stonyhurst claims a right of _several
fishery_, both in the Ribble and the Hodder. That is, they
exercise a right to fish in both rivers, where they have no land,
and they exercise this right so freely that they take more fish
than all the other upper proprietors added together. If, then, the
tax is laid on the extent of frontage to the rivers, these
reverend gentlemen would escape entirely, so far as the right of
_several fishery_ extends, and would only pay the rate on their
own extent of frontage.

Again, the new bill does not embody the suggestions of the
Worcester meeting as to the right of way for the water-bailiffs;
but according to Mr. Eden's comment upon it at Chester and
elsewhere, a strict surveillance is to be kept on weirs, to which
the water-bailiffs are to have free access. Personally I have no
objection to this, provided the water-bailiffs are