, the very
learned judge in set terms decided, to wit, - That as for the boat, he awarded
it to the plaintiffs, because they had merely abandoned it to save their lives;
but that with regard to the controverted whale, harpoons, and line, they
belonged to the defendants; the whale, because it was a Loose-Fish at the time
of the final capture; and the harpoons and line because when the fish made off
with them, it (the fish) acquired a property in those articles; and hence
anybody who afterward took the fish had a right to them. Now the plaintiffs
afterward took the fish; ergo, the aforesaid articles were theirs.
    A common man looking at this decision of the very learned judge, might
possibly object to it. But ploughed up to the primary rock of the matter, the
two great principles laid down in the twin whaling laws previously quoted, and
applied and elucidated by Lord Ellenborough in the above-cited case; these two
laws touching Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish, I say, will, on reflection, be found the
fundamentals of all human jurisprudence; for notwithstanding its complicated
tracery of sculpture, the Temple of the Law, like the Temple of the Philistines,
has but two props to stand on.
    Is it not a saying in everyone's mouth, Possession is half of the law: that
is, regardless of how the thing came into possession? But often possession is
the whole of the law. What are the sinews and souls of Russian serfs and
Republican slaves but Fast-Fish, whereof possession is the whole of the law?
What to the rapacious landlord is the widow's last mite but a Fast-Fish? What is
yonder undetected villain's marble mansion with a doorplate for a waif; what is
that but a Fast-Fish? What is the ruinous discount which Mordecai, the broker,
gets from poor Woebegone, the bankrupt, on a loan to keep Woebegone's family
from starvation; what is that ruinous discount but a Fast-Fish? What is the
Archbishop of Savesoul's income of £100,000 seized from the scant bread and
cheese of hundreds of thousands of broken-backed labourers (all sure of heaven
without any of Savesoul's help), what is that globular 100,000 but a Fast-Fish?
What are the Duke of Dunder's hereditary towns and hamlets but Fast-Fish? What
to that redoubted harpooneer, John Bull, is poor Ireland, but a Fast-Fish? What
to that apostolic lancer, Brother Jonathan,