The Express.
London, England, 1863-10-17 00:00:00

Cite OrprelSfi.

TO COLIMPONDISTIL
,dvertlowseuta 'Mended for " The LYpreas" Loudon loosing
Paw, must be et the Atm W, houverfeotreet. 4 Two
fieloa on the day of pabiloatlon.

COViiST-GAIDEN.
Tins Evearrso, THE DESERT FLOWER.. Mews. W. H.
Wets., U. Corn, A. (Act, sod W. Harrison . Misses Lou sa and
bawl I')ue. Conductor )Lr. A. Hation.—Curannisee at &

AYMAZICET.
THIS Ertrtniti, }Milan I or, 81• Y AND COUNTER•SPv.
Mr.,trs. A.Wisau sad Bockstone Mrs. Denton, Mrs. A. Witrar,
and Miss Andel —C dAaLES XIL Moons. Wigan and Buck-
Moor. -And TIED GALICIAN Fitt& 311. s Fanny Wright•

Tate BMWS, BIUXDA SEACIZAVL —Till GREAT
Windt' EIPYRCT„—MoryIog b 7 Ram Collins, Mr. Randall, and
lime. Plow—and LADY r, I'DLEY'S SR. 'RET. ?losers.
Reynold; Cranford. and Parry; Misses Miles and Downing.

KIDD W Anal Al UMW/4 SAMOS
MS DST —llsrelsa a Da... .Aarroson 411. 51.4
Isaliaol4-31arass. 14.. 14a.. ..AlMrsoso. 6k.

LONDON, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17.

THREE years ago there went up from Worcester-
shire a great and bitter cry. Sir JOHN Psxmorox,
the Chairman of Quarter Sessions in that county,
gave it articulate voice ; it reached, and was echoed
from all the other rural regions of England. It
was the cry of the landlords over their game. It
penetrated next session the walls of the Legisla-
ture, and, amid shouts and violence, a remedy was
proposed and passed into law. Henceforth the
Police were to be guardians of this particular sub-
ject of sport. In vain did the Home Szcserativ
urge the unconstitutional nature of the powers con-
ferred, in vain did Lord PALMERSTON explain that he
abstained from remaining to oppose it in late divi-
sions only for the imperial object of preserving his
personal health. The police were invested with au-
thority to stop and search on the highway men or
women whom they might suspect of haying game
in their possession, and the novel principle was in-
troduced of requiring a suspected culprit to prove
his innocence, instead of requiring the accuser
to establish the guilt. It would seem that even
these extensive powers have proved insufficient.
We now learn that poaching is more prevalent
than ever in Worcestershire, and from other parts
of the country we have almost daily accounts of
affrays in which trespassers, keepers, and police
fight with deadly weapons, and not unfrequently to
• fatal issue. So now the Times inform% us that
the one essential change in the law which these
circumstances call for is to declare game property.
It avows its conviction that the system of pre-
serving is already as popular among the tenantey
as it is beloved by the landlord% who breed, and
the exhausted barristers, authors, and merchants
who rent the right to shoot the pheasants and hares
preserved. It holds, therefore, that all that is
needed is to deter the poacher by converting him
into a thief. When this is done all will be simple ;
there will be no more trespassing or snaring ; there
will be harmony between breeders, feeders, and
killers, and the vested rights of each will be no
more interfered with on the part of either starving
poor or organized marauders.
There are two objections to this conclusion.
The one is, that if we did declare game property
we should have to treat it like other property,
with neither more nor less of favour, and conse-
quently we should have to require its owner so to
mark and identify and confine it as to deserve the
aid of the law in its protection. When, for the asks
of drawing the more custom, a shopkeeper hangs
out his goods in the street, we neither regard with
the same reprobation, nor punish with the same
severity, the thief who appropriates articles thus
offered temptingly to his grasp, as we do the
burglar who forces the door by which property is
guarded. So, if a landlord has pheasants and hams
roaming at large for the sake of his personal amuse-
ment, or of making money by letting to another the
right to such amusement, and wished to have
them regarded as property, we should b.: obliged
to tell him that he was using his propel./ so as to
make it • stumbling-block to hi% neighbours ; and
that the law could give him no further encourage-
ment in such a use than it gives to the city pawn-
broker who exposes his wares in the street. No
legislature could, for very shame, make a law for
inflicting extra punishment on otose who fall into
such • trap—no judge would be inhuman enough
to impose other than the smallest penalty on those
who yielded to such temptation. Nor could the
landlord gain any help from the suggestion, that the
law protects horses, sheep, and cattle while in the open
fields. They are favourably regarded because they
are appropriated to a known owner, and capable of
being easily identified. Thus theft is made, by
the nature of things, difficult of perpetration, and
obviously easy of detection, and ace ,rdingly the
law adds its terrors. But where theft is easy,
reetrained by no difficulty of concesiiment of the
subject, deterred from by no probability of the
article being traced or recognised, the 1... w would
refuse to interpose a severe penalty to prohibit
abstraction of what the owner has been at no pains
to render secure.

But the nominal declaration that game is pro-
perty would be attended by another consequence.
It could not change the popular opinion of its
character. Bight or wrong, the far. is that the
people of this country will not look upon game m
property. They have been brought up in the
creed that it is not property, and an act of
parliament will not change their belief. Nothing,
however, is more dangerous than to set the law
at variance with public opinion. Nothing more
contributes to its evasion, nothing even is •
stronger temptation to the bolder spirits to break
it. Is it desirable that this sentiment of a
breach in the ancient common law of the re dm,
made by a statute passed in an assembly of land-
owners, should be auperadded to the bad blood
which • series of penal laws has already created
in Worcestershire and eliewhere

We cannot, therefore, accept this alteration in
the law as a probable panacea for the evil of
poachiog ; but we shall suggest what has been the
course adopted by the Legislature in circumstances

nearly parallel. Smuggling is another of the
offences which the popular instinct cannot be per-
suaded to include in the category of heinous crimes.
We have tried hanging for it ; we have tried a
specially trained body of coast guards and excise-
men ; we have backed them with every power the
law could give and the resources of the empire
furnish. Aq faded. It was not repressed by