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offensive to the eye, and repugnant to taste and smell, but are changed into elements of disease and death. Where this state of things has existed for a long time, it cannot be remedied in a day. But no one who has paid attention to this subject has any doubt, that if a reasonable time be allowed for the carrying into effect of remedial measures, this can be done without at all seriously interfering with the interests of trade and manufacture.
"The country is greatly to blame for having permitted this evil to assume its present gigantic proportions, but if with our eyes fully opened, by the results of public enquiry, to its deleterious and demoralising influence, we permit it to continue and extend itself, we shall be unpardonable.
"But we need hardly remind your Lordship that every day's delay will increase our embarrassments, and that the sooner a check is put upon the present wholesale wanton destruction of one of the first necessaries of life, the easier will be our return to that system of effectual preservation of our streams from which unhappily we have so widely departed."
7th March, 1864.
3rd Annual Report of the Inspectors of Salmon Fisheries (England and Wales), pp. 20, 21, 22
