gence, operate as a constant excitement to their infraction, which no legislative interference that your Committee could recommend appears likely to counteract.

It appears that, under the present system, those possessors of land who fall within the statutable disqualifications feel little or no interest in the preservation of the game, and that they are less active in repressing the baneful practice of poaching, than if they remained entitled to kill and enjoy the game found upon their own lands. Nor is it unnatural to suppose that the injury done to the crops, in those situations where game is superabundant, may induce the possessors of land thus circumstanced, rather to encourage than to suppress illegal modes of destroying it.

The expediency of the present restraints upon the possessors of land appears further to your Committee extremely problematical. The game is maintained by the produce of the land, and your Committee is not aware of any valid grounds for continuing to withhold from the possessors of land the enjoyment of that property which has appeared by the common law to belong to them.

The present system of Game Laws produces the effect of encouraging its illegal and irregular, destruction by poachers, in whom an interest is thereby created to obtain a livelihood by systematic and habitual infractions of the law. It can hardly be necessary for your Committee to point out the mischievous influence of such a state upon the moral conduct of those who addict themselves to such practices; to them may be readily traced many of the irregularities, and most of the crimes, which are prevalent among the lower orders in agricultural districts.

Your Committee hesitate to recommend, at this late period of the session, the introduction of an immediate measure, upon a subject which affects a variety of interests; but they cannot abstain from expressing a sanguine expectation, that by the future adoption of some measure, founded upon the principle recognized, as your Committee conceive, by the common law, much of the evils originating in the present system of the Game Laws may be ultimately removed ikk Upon mature consideration of the premises, your Committee have come to the following Resolution;

RESOLVED,

That it is the opinion of this Committee, that all game should be the property of the person upon whose lands such game should be found.

AGAIN the county gaols of England are overflowing with poachers, many of whose cases are marked with circumstances peculiarly desperate and atrocious.

Previous to the two last sessions of Parliament, in two several Jetters to you, I fully exposed the pernicious tendency of the Game Laws as they now stand, and the almost irresistible temptations to crime which they hold out. I endeavoured to mark, as I thought they deserved, the immorality and the utter absurdity of continuing an obsolete prohibition which the change in the state of society has actually converted into an encouragement, the practical result of which is simply to give the monopoly of a profitable traffic to rogues and vagabonds, and thus to encourage the increase of those meritorious personages, while it exceedingly discourages the breed and preservation of game, which it is its ostensible object to protect,...

ར, !

Although these facts are undeniable and unrefuted-nay, although they are confirmed and substantiated by the decision and report of a large and enlightened committee of the House of Commons, many of whom were country gentlemen converted in spite of longcherished prejudice, yet, strange to say, every attempt to build up a better system upon sound and rational principles has hitherto been defeated in Parliament. And what is still more extraordinary, in proportion as a misapplied increase of severity has been found to lead to its natural and necessary consequence, the increase and

propagation of the cri:ne, has it been nevertheless applied in spite of al experience, but in the sapient expectation of repressing the offence.

Few things have more excited my astonishment than that such a code of laws should still be permitted to rear its head in such a country. As Eglishmen we have many privileges and institutions which gloriously distinguish us not only from the slaves, but from the free-men of other countries; but in respect to our Game Laws we are really behindhand with the lowest slaves of the most despotic governments in Europe.

It is not however my intention to travel over again the ground which has been already made good. I consider it as proved and admitted, and no longer open to a reasonable doubt, that the present Game Laws are become in their actual operation oppressive and unequal,—so completely ineffectual for their professed object as even to have a contrary tendency-altogether inapplicable to the present state of society in England, and above all that they are the convicted parents of more than half the brutal crimes which stain the annals of our country villages. If any one still doubt the truth of these assertions, he is referred to the unanswered arguments of my two former letters. Unless they are open to answer and refutation, I cannot think that in times like these, when genuine moral feeling is widely diffused through all classes, so enormous and gratuitous a blot will long be permitted to rest upon our national polity.

It is however, alas ! but too true that in a numerous community many will have their judgments imperceptibly biassed by their supposed interests. But it is also consistent with a just observation of human affairs to perceive, that whenever men act upon the calculation of their supposed interests being in opposition to the claims of justice and morality, they are always as much mistaken in their interests as they are in their duty.

To show that this is so in the case before us is the principal ob ject of this letter, in which I hope to show you more in detail than the limits of my former letters would a low, that all parties whose interests are in any way involved in the subject would be materially benefited by a radical alteration of the present system, and that none could possibly receive the least injury.

The first party which occurs to our notice is the landed proprie

tor, in whom is virtually (and, as some writers contend, legally also) vested the property in the game upon the land. It is at first sight natural to suppose that these persons looking into the statutebook, and finding an immense string of severe penal restrictions upon the invaders of this property, so much beyond what the protection of other property of the same value is thought to require, it is natural I say to suppose that they should conclude this at least to be free from invasion. Yet it is in point of fact more exposed to it than any other. This may appear perhaps inconsistent with reasonable expectation.

Why is it that the penalties upon smuggling tea, sugar, tobacco, and other taxed articles of general consumption, are more efficient in repressing the offence? Probably, because by paying the duty the article may be had in an honest way. There is a competition between the fair and the unfair dealer, and the superior profit of the latter is more than compensated by his risk of incurring the penalty. But if the importation and sale of tea, sugar, and tobacco, were absolutely prohibited, so that they could only be had of the smuggler, I apprehend no penalties would be sufficient to prevent their introduction and consumption, and that the more severe the penalties, the greater would be the encouragement afforded to the smuggler. He would be assisted in the evasion of penalties by every one except the revenue officer; indeed, nine tenths of the people would be partakers of the crime. Moreover, the law itself would be so generally considered absurd and unjust, that no man of ordinary feeling and understanding could bring himself to enforce it against his neighbour.

Just so of the Game Laws:so long as Englishmen, of all the men in Europe, are actually prohibited by severe penalties from fairly bringing to open market an article so generally coveted by purchasers as game, the law practically says nothing more nor less than this, that the article shall be exclusively brought to market by the unfair dealer; who is assisted in the evasion of the penalty by every individual save the lord of the manor; and who moreover excites so much compassion in all other minds from the absurdity and injustice of the law to which he is exposed, that in nine cases out of ten the offence cannot be prosecuted to conviction. It is obvious too that the higher the penalties, the greater is the encou

ragement arising from all these causes, and the greater the temptation to commit the offence; because, when it succeeds, its remuneration is so much the higher. Whereas were the market fairly open to the honest dealer, and the question were only whether he should sell his commodity at a rate somewhat higher than the dishonest dealer, this difference might easily be compensated by a moderate penalty, which no man would hesitate in enforcing, because it would be considered both just and necessary, and which would therefore be really effectual in repressing the offence. Under this system too nine tenths of the community would be enlisted (as in all other cases) against the dishonest dealer, instead of in his favor. The purveyor, the purchaser, and the consumer, would certainly prefer procuring the same article without risk of a penalty than with it; and the interest of the occupier of the land would be to watch and repress the invader of a property now rendered of some value to him, instead of encouraging them to destroy what was previously an unprofitable nuisance.

From this reasoning I venture to conclude, that there is scarcely any conceivable system of legislation, except that merciful and sapient one which goes by the name of the Game Laws, that could render the proprietors of land insecure in the enjoyments arising out of the possession of game.

I have often contrasted in my mind the relative comfort on the one hand of the Squire sitting in his parlour with an angry brow, and receiving the daily return of spikes, steel traps and spring guns, of attorneys' bills for prosecuting and imprisoning poachers; of petitions from their destitute wives and children, of gamekeepers fettered and fastened to trees by the poachers' wires, or of poachers and keepers maimed and slaughtered together in indiscriminate combats in the dark; and, above all, daily aggravated reports of the increasing hatred to himself, and augmented brutality, profligacy, and ferocity towards each other, of the villagers whose moral and political welfare it is his duty to consult; and, on the other hand, the same Squire under an ameliorated system, inviting his friends to walk with him in his woods without fear of endangering their lives, promoting the pecuniary as well as the moral interests of his neighbours and tenants by affording them a profitable article for sale as well as for recreation, securing to himself by the best of all