The Press.
London, England, 1858-12-04 00:00:00

THE PRESS, DECEMBER 4, 1858.

" vise ought to be subject, and thus setting the
" first example of deadly encounter." Policemen
arc men who prevent no result, but pass their
lives in " being active ever since ;" and Landed
Proprietors are gentlemen.who recklessly protect
their property from spoliation and their lands
from trespass.
These are the plague-spots. The remedies are,
the abolition of the Game Laws, and the
one recommended by Mr. COBDEN in an ad-
dress to the people of Buckinghamshire, which
is quoted as follows :—" I say to the cottager,
if you have not a gun, be sure you get one,
"and when you see a hare cross your path,
‘. shoot it, take it home, boil it in a pot, and eat
it, and share it with your wife and family"
Where shall we begin in considering this absurd
hash of fallacies g Let us begin at the end. The
last two are disposable in fewest words perhaps.
With regard to the Cobden remedy : we happen
to know something of the property mentioned,
and of Mr. CoaDEN's management of it as a land-
lord. It was not an estate at all; and, if we
remember right, he had two tenants, one the
keeper of the omnium gather= shop in the vil-
lage, and the other a small miller. Game was
unrepresented on the estate save by one solitary
rabbit, to whose age the oldest inhabitant was
unable to testify, and the hares which were to
have been boiled in the peasant's pot, if they were
to do anything towards the support of his family,
must have been as miraculous in their charac-
teristics as the Widow's Cruise of Oil and Meal
Tub ; and, moreover, they would have been pro-
duced had they existed, at the expense, not of
Mr. COBDEN, but of his neighbour. To be
generous and philosophical at the cost of others is
not difficult, and is as much part of the stock in
trade of such as Mr. COBDEN as wax-work simi-
litudes of murderers are the stage property of a
Mrs. Jarley.
With regard to Game Laws, we have only to
say in reply to our contemporary that the re are
no such things. They were extinguished when
game was made saleable and accessible to every
man who has land whereon to feed it. There is
a law of tresss extremely insufficient and badly
administered,pa but of the Game Laws of the
Norman there is only one absurd and mis-
chievous remnant in the shape of the license from
the Board of Inland Revenue to kill the crea-
tures which are the produce and property of the
soil.

With regard to the poacher, the hungry and
cold November man of the Morning Star, we
will venture to say—and we happen to have a
remarkable amount of information upon the sub-
ject in our possession—that there can scarcely be
produced an instance, certainly not one in a
thousand, in which a man engaged in poaching
from want in his family or from hunger in him-
self. The incentive to poaching in the peasant
is the same spirit that induces men of fortune,
the Dukes of RUTLAND or of BEAUFORT, Lord
FITZHARDINGE or Mr. ASSHETON SMITH,
Mr. HARVEY COMBE Or Mr. MORRELL, to
hunt a country. It is the love of sport
which is inherent in the Anglo-Saxon Race. Our
contemporary is apparently extremely ignorant
of the life and of the pursuits which he attempts
to criticise and condemn ; and, therefore, before
he writes again upon the subject we recommend
him to read twu articles which were contributed
by Mr. KINGSLEY to Fraser's Magazine, in, if we
remember correctly, April and August of the
present year, entitled " My Winter Garden" and
"Chalk Streams." Even the Morning Star will
probably not dispute Mr. KINGSLEY'S claims to
be considered a friend of the poor. It is sport—
sport obtained luxuriously, and sport remune-
rated at a higher price than ordinary labour, that
creates the Poacher and enchains him to the
illegal and reckless pursuit by its combined
fascination of pleasure and profit.
No doubt these men would make fine soldiers
if they had a chance. No doubt they have
innate the same qualities of mind and body that
carried our officers and men through the charge
at Balaklava, and through the battles of India.
Poachers, as men, are not innately different
from their countrymen whom circumstances con-
stitute Squires and Peers ; they become dif-
ferent ; they become degraded by the education
which such publications as the Morning Star
confer upon them, and by the influence of such
principles as they instil into them.
,\Yho places the gam('
which, we are told,

tifiably to murder him ? Our contemporary says
the Landowner. We say, the Law, the defective
Law, and its still more defective administration.
" The police have been active ever since." Is
that kind of activity the proper function of a
Police Force ? Is it not their duty to prevent as
much as to detect ; and can it be said that the
police organization of a district is satisfactory
when men—armed men, with guns loaded, not
with shot to kill pheasants, but with slugs to
murder men—can meet in beer-shops, and
sally forth in bodies to carry out their law-
less enterprizes and deadly intentions ? The
shortcomings of the police concern the adminis-
tration of the Law, but the Law itself has de-
fects in principle which no administration can
neutralize. Under the Law as it now stands no
man can kill even upon his own land the game
which the law by rendering it saleable has de-
clared to be his own without license obtained
from the Crown. To kill game is not a
right, but a privilege—a theory and a
practice essentially opposed in principle to the
Act which makes pheasants, partridges, &c., sale-
able. We know that this glaring inconsistency
has had a great effect upon the minds of the
people, especially of those who prefer sport to
work. They are convinced in their hearts that
the Legislature and the Crown do not regard
game as property, and that they only refrain from
declaring Communism in that especial product of
the soil from fear of the great proprietors of the
kingdom. A conviction which they will retain till
the Crown and Parliament substitute a tax upon
guns for the present absurd Game Licences, and
till the Secretary of State for the home Depart-
ment insists upon the Police putting a stop to
the gathering of armed men at night for the per-
petration of what the Morning Star considers the
heroic deed "of sallying forth in a brave state
" of mind with guns and dogs to make an inroad
" upon a stately property" and to murder its
guardians.

OUR COMMUNICATION WITH INDIA.

AMONGST the consoling lessons of history, there
is one which we may certainly pick out as pecu-
liarly adapted to the circumstances of this
country at the present moment; and it is this,
that events which in themselves at first seemed
to bear all the tokens of the worst of evils have
generally in the end contributed in a high de-
gree to the future benefit of the nation or per-
sons most intimately concerned. Take war as
an instance. What calamity is more dreaded,
and yet how often has it proved a blessing, and
been overruled to the benefit of mankind ? In
the wars of Rome this was pre-eminently true.
They were the civilization of the world. As
thunderstorms to an impure atmosphere, as a
great fire to a packed and filthy locality, so are
many severe visitations which at first seem to
overwhelm or consume, but in the result take
away more evil than they bring, and leave bles-
sings behind them that more than compensate
for the incidental mischief that attended their
working. When our friendly relations with other
Powers are interrupted, the facilities of commerce
are checked, if not destroyed. We are thrown
back upon our own resources, and must either
relinquish many customary luxuries and comforts
or create home supplies. This necessarily gives
a stimulus to enterprize, and becomes the means
of developing new sources of wealth which
might otherwise have lain dormant for ages. It
is the tendency of a protracted period of tran-
quillity to induce torpor and apathy; and however
much a time of peace may minister to the
general happiness of society, it is far from
being that in which the grandest and most
original efforts of human thought are made. The
age of the AzrroxlNEs was unquestionably a
period of much social enjoyment in the Roman
empire, but we look in vain in the annals of that
penod for the intellectual enterprize, the vigorous
expression, or disinterested feeling which marked
the stormy days of CA:SAR or PomPEY. In spite
of all its attendant evils, war undoubtedly has its
opportunities of good which we have the power
to turn to account ; and the Indian mutiny,
\trociV is r

1175

This calamitous outbreak has taught us many
trenchant lessons, but, humanly speaking, none
more important than the absolute necessity of in-
troducing more of the progressive element
into the Indian Government and Administra-

tion. To do this we must begin with material
appliances. We must establish the means of
consentaneous action between the heart and the

extremities—we must, in fact, perfect our com-
munications. We have already in part alluded to
this subject in our comments on Lord STRATFORD
DR REIX;LIFFE'S speech at Smyrna ; we have a
few further observations to make upon it now.
Among other considerations which the question
involves is that of the people through whose in-
heritance we should have to cut our way. Be-
tween India and Eastern Europe there is a race
of men unlike any other on the face of the globe,
ancient in their traditions, roving in their habits,
questionable in their reputation, but strong for
good or ill, according as we use them. We mean,
of course, the Arabs. It is with them that we

should most particularly be brought in contact
should we carry out the projected line of com-
munication by the valley of the Euphrates. It

has been objected by some that this race e is not a
reliable one, and that the success of railway com-

munication through such an extent of country is
dependent in a great measure upon the conduct
of the people through whose native land it lies.
But the difficulty has been overstated. The Arabs
indeed are a singular people, uniting in their
character the extremes of good and evil. The
result of many years' experience shows them
capable of the greatest fidelity and gratitude in
some instances, and of the opposite vices in others.
Our chief difficulty would arise from their igno-
rance, the feuds of tribe and blood, and, occa-
sionally, their religious fanaticism. But looking
at the worst side of the picture, and supposing
them to place every impediment in their power
in our way, we should find that, notwithstanding
their individual bravery and cunning, they are
too incapable of combination ever to become in
any strong way confederates against us. On the
other hand, it has been proved that they are
particularly susceptible of the good effects of
kindness and good faith. As an instance of this,
it is said that during the Euphrates expedition
two years ago, to ;determine the practicabilityof
the railway scheme, not a single injury was sus-
tained either to our men or means from the Arabs.
They carried large and valuable stores of
ammunition, provisions, and money, and in no
case was there a single instance of dishonesty.
Their remuneration was usually paid in advance,
and yet if prevented from fulfilling their engage-
ments, the wages were scrupulously returned.
This affords a fair inference, as far as it goes, of a
good material on which to work.
But, further, those who would discountenance
this scheme, for fear of the Arabs, forget that a
railway running through a fertile district is a
vein of life. In a very few years we should see
towns and villages springing up along the line of
transit, peopled by thousands of these nomades,
who would in time learn the arts of a more fixed
and civilized mode of life. Even the period
occupied in the construction of this route, and the
example and influence of numbers of workmen
faithfully persevering at a gigantic task, would
not be without a moral and social lesson of the
highest value to these people. It would increase
our intercourse with them; it would teach them the
advantages of employment, and open out to them
new sources of gain and traffic. They are not
less alive to their own interests than other
races, and would soon see how the railroad pro-
vides remunerative work for them, their camels,
and all their resources. These considerations re-
duce the discouragement which at first might
seem to be reasonable, from the peculiarity of
the Arab race, and hold out the prospect that
they will eventually be helpers, rather than hin-
derers, of the communication between the East
and West. Great is England's duty to the East.
Vast have been the benefits which she has de-
rived from India. Immense, too, is the task that
lies before her of modifying the future of that
great province. For all these reasons we urge
that no sort of discouragement not founded upon
demonstrable impossibilities ought to prevent us
from as speedily as possible reducing the distance
that lies between us, by availing ourselves of the
favourable track which nature and policy indi-
cate, and establishing the most rapid and effec-
tual mode transit yet discovered in our

U

as they instil into them.
"110 places the gamekeeper in that position notwithstanding its characteristic atzocaties, is no tual mode of transit yet duieovered in our
wilich) we are told, incites the Poacher jus. exception to the rule. intercourse with India.