The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1865-10-17 00:00:00

• by I or those
Ue of Uwe r

show of reason in the laws as they stand. Now
the period has gone by for loud denunciations.
What was once called the iniquity of the thing
has long since diminished. The hardship of the
Game Laws with whiai was oonnected some
years ago a vast deal of sentimentality has long
ceased to exist. There was a time when a thrill
of pity rang through the land for poor Hodge,
whose miseries tempted hilt to risk imprison-
ment for the sake of a pheasant or hare. Then
it was that writers like ?Aim kartineati entered
on a crusade worthy Of their talent and philan-
thropy, and the Game Laws were really a dis-
grace to our civilization. When a starving
peasant relieved the hungry little ones at home
by purloining one of the squire's birds and got
sent to gaol for it, no wonder that kind and
charitable individuals cried shame. At that time
partridges and pheasants were exalted into
"birds of heaven ;" and poaching, if it was not
exactly encouraged, was regarded as a very
venial offence. Free Trade, however, and the
cheap loaf have changed all that ; a new com-
plexion ia given to the whole thing, and really
speaking, the question has resolved itself into a
simple matter between landlord and tenant. It
always see= to us that there is as much to be
said for the Game Laws as for Church rates.
They are both relics of—we will not say feudality,
btit of a fir off past An individual who pur-
chases property or rents a house, does so under
certain conditions, one of these conditions is
that he pays a certain sum annually for the sup-
port of the church, and the purchase money is
regulated aooordingly. Is he not then bound in
fairness and common honesty to keep up this
payment, and can he with any show of
iesion *litteier, afterwards tiirn round and re-
pudiate it! The ease is very nearly similar
when a man enters on alarm. The proprietor
says to him, "I let you this land on certain
conditions, one of them being that you must
allow my birds to roam over the ground I let
you, and help themselves to whatever they find
on it." If the proposition were a new one, we
should probably deem it the most extraordinary
that ever was made, and no doubt every farmer
in the land siould etrilitly rebel against it. But
nientizleridi that tile ciistoni is nearly as ancient
'1 as Adam," that moreover all tenants are pretty
much in the same position, what can the farmer
do but submit, and having submitted, and
entered into a clear understanding with his
landlord, what right has he afterwards to find
fault? This would seem, as Sam Sliek says "as
clear as mud:" We do tolt see how the sending
of even a hundred farmer-members to Parlia-
ment could get rid of the time-honoured custom
of game-preserving. It is as deeply rooted in
the relationship of landlord and tenant as any-
thing we know of. Nor can we imagine any
circumstances likely to disturb it as long as land-
oft-tiers remain what they are, and the love of
sport amongst all ()lessee what it is. Granted
then that Squires have a right to preserve, what
are we to say of the act of poaching? Undoubtedly
it is a crime, and as such should be punishable
by law. . A great deal of false pity haa been
tirested for the otilpfit *lid duds hinisalf in the
clutches of the policeman, and much undeserved
blame has been launched at the recent measure
which makes detection easy and escape im-
possible. But if we will only admit that the
landowner has a perfect right to preserve what
birds and aninials he likes on his own land, the
tenant farmer agreeing to the bargain sitreiy it
must be allowed that I persdn who steals One of
those birds is as culpable ad he *lid rObfi chickens
front a barnyard. The Only *cinder is that
writers have ever been found to argue otherwise.
Let us disapprove the law of primogeniture, or
the growing evil of land monopoly if we please,
but do not let us find fault with laws which are
made in pure justice to a system we can neither
alter nor remove. If the system is. bad as affect-
ing the farmer, that is a matter which he has it in
his own power to rectify. Agitation and com-
bination have before now done great things, and
if a class of individuals so numerous as the
farmers cannot succeed in removing such a
difficulty from their path, we must conclude
either that the grieVanee is not very great or
that their energy is eiceedingli iittlii. At all
events as long as the preservation of game is
legalized and the farmer is unable to help him-
self out of the presumed difficulty, there is no
reason why we should entertain much pity for
him. Still less is there reason for finding fault
with la*s *hit& Were Morel, designed to punish
the dishonest.