Jane Miller's law expenses were thirty-seven
pounds, and those of the conservators forty-
nine; so the Kings of the Thames had to pay
about one hundred pounds altogether for a
single toe.

The conservators receive from forty to sixty
thousand pounds a year, in rents and tolls of
various kinds, from dock and canal companies,
water companies, steam-boat owners,
shipowners, &c.; out of this revenue they pay
their working expenses, and the interest of a
loan which has supplied them with capital.
After seven years' experience, it has been deemed
proper to modify the constitution and powers
of the board of conservators; and to this end
an act was passed in the recent session of
parliament. There are now to be six elected
conservators, in addition to the twelve nominated
by the Crown, the Corporation, and the Trinity
House; these six are to be elected by
shipowners, steam-boat owners, steam-tug owners,
dock owners, wharfingers, and lightermen—so
everybody is to have a finger in the mud-pie, if
he be immediately interested in the Thames.
The selling of sand and gravel from the bed of
the river, for ballast, is to be transferred from
the Trinity House to the conservators; these
gentlemen may be their own ballast heavers if
they like; but, whether or not,, the Queen is
to get a share of the proceeds of this said mud.

Much legislation has been needed to
determine whether the Queen or certain of her
subjects are lawful owners of the Thames and its
mud.

In Cornwall the contest has presented rather
singular features. The Duchy of Cornwall has
for many generations belonged to the Prince of
Wales, or to the sovereign when there was no
such prince. The present prince, for instance,
is a little king in that county, with a little
cabinet of ministers of his own. He nominates
the sheriffs; he sits in council to hear appeals
from the decisions of the Lord Warden of the
Stannaries (or tin-miners' court); and he
obtains rents or royalties from the workers of
mines in various parts of the duchy, and from
the occupiers of property of various kinds. This
income, after defraying every expense, leaves a
snug fifty thousand pounds a year net, to help
Albert Edward and Alexandra to pay their
housekeeping bills. Long may they live to
enjoy it! But this is not the point; we must
stick to the mud. The Queen claims the
foreshore of Cornwall as well as that of all other
parts of her dominions; and she claims also the
ownership of the bed of the sea itself to a
certain distance around all her islands. Of the
three parallel strips, the dry shore is owned by
some landowner or other; the foreshore, or
alternately wet-and-dry strip, is claimed by the
Queen; and the strip which is always under the
sea is claimed by her Majesty also. But lo! in
our south-westernmost county a difficulty has
more than once arisen. The Prince of Wales,
through his law officers, has told his royal
mother that, however dutiful he wishes to be,
he must claim certain sovereign rights over the
sea-margin of his duchy. The Queen, through
her law officers, informs the prince that, however
much she loves him, she must assert her
claim to the whole of the sea-margin of Britain.
Now, it happens that, in Cornwall, if a rich vein
of tin or copper lies near the coast, the miners
will follow it whithersoever it tends, even under
the foreshore, and under the bed of the sea.
In one memorable instance, the miners actually
began a mine out at sea, a mile distant from the
shore ; making a coffer-dam to keep out the
water, and then beginning to dig when they
had laid bare the bed of the sea. In all other
cases, however, the under-sea workings are
extensions of those which were begun under the
dry land. At the famous Botallack Mine, the
workings extend under the foreshore, and then
six or eight hundred feet under the sea itself,
with a crust or roof overhead so thin that the
roar of the ocean can be heard. At the Huel
Mine, some years ago, the workings were carried
so far that the miners had to fly, lest the sea
should wash them out altogether by breaking
through the thin crust. It is only within a
comparatively recent period that anybody thought
of claiming rent or royalty for such a singular
mining region as this under the sea. When,
however, it came to be acknowledged that mines
underneath rivers, foreshore, and the bed of the
sea, ought to pay royalty as well as those under
dry land, rival claimants to the royalty appeared.
The prince as duke, his mother as queen, the
prince as sovereign lord of Cornwall, his mother
as sovereign lady of the whole realm—which
should it be ? Very wisely, they did not " come
into court." The advisers on both sides, knowing
that the matter would be a complicated one,
gave full powers as arbitrator to one of the
learned judges who was more than usually looked
up to for that kind of lore. How many statutes
and charters, decisions and grants, the learned
judge went over, we are afraid to guess; but
he ultimately propounded this award—that the
Queen ought to have a right to all the minerals
under the actual bed of the sea ; whereas the
prince has, or ought to have, a right to all the
minerals under the mud of the Cornish foreshore.

But in other counties, where the peculiar
rights of the Duke of Cornwall do not prevail,
the foreshore is more valuable to the Crown.
The law, while recognising the sovereign as lord
(or lady) of the rivers as well as the dry land of the
United Kingdom, virtually gives the sovereign
the right of ownership to the singular strip which
is due wholly to the action of the tides. If it
be nobody's property, nobody would take care
to keep it in proper order ; and if it be worth
anything at all, everybody would be snatching at
it : hence the prudence of vesting it in some one
proprietor. Whatever is upon the foreshore
should pay some kind of rent ; whatever is under
the foreshore should pay some kind of royalty.
The Crown, represented by the Commissioners
of Woods and Forests, keeps a regular debtor
and creditor account of all the bits of foreshore
that thus come into profitable use, and goes to