The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-07 00:00:00

THE GAME LAWS.

A writer in the Examiner says :—" Had I a seat
in Parliament, and nothing had interfered to pre-
vent my attendance, I certainly should have sup-
ported Mr. Forster's motion fur a Committee on the
operation of the Game Laws. As regards the tone,
temper, and talent of Mr. Forster's speech I fully
agree with you, sir, but there are some points of
the subject upon which I, in some degree, differ
with you, and as an old correspondent, offer yon a
few remarks. With much willingness I profess
myself ready to admit my error if you show me
that lam wrong. Ido not think that any inquiry
is necessary to point out to any one tolerably con-
versant with the subject the working of the present
Game Laws, or the faults of the present system, the
last Act inclusive. You cannot have more complete
inquiry than that which Mr. B right demanded from
the House of Commons, and obtained in the early
part of the present reign, nor could any Select Com-
mittee more clearly elucidate the existing state of
things. Mr. Bright had been in the habit of fiercely
and somewhat loosely denouncing the Game Laws
out of the House, and I do not hesitate to say that
no man's previous views and statements were ever
more completely proved tube erroneous and founded
on fallacy than those of Mr. Bright. Able and
powerful as we know Mr. Bright to be in all matters
in which he is versed, the singular positio❑ in which
the evidence taken before that Committee placed
him, and the wholly different result produced by its
labours from that which he expected, lead us back
to the old conclusions, equally just in every case,
that knowledge is power, and a little knowledge
a dangerous thing. I dare not trespass so far on
your space as to attempt to give you an analysis
of the evidence taken by Mr. Bright's Committee,
but I confidently refer you to the ponderous blue-
book. Such bold assertions as that four hares would
eat as much as one sheep, and were supposed like
a sheep steadily to graze on until satisfied, stood
for what they were worth when the stomachs of
the relative animals were produced. The quiet
gluttony of the sheep was brought into comparison
with the restless feeding of the hare, never taken on
one spot, but from herbs culled here and there in a
night's gallop of many miles. The grain-destroying
propensities charged upon pheasants and partridges,
who were accused of living the whole year round on
farmers' corn, scratching it up when sown, and
pulling down the ears when grown were completely
set aside, nor did it appear that Mr. Bright had
ever allowed the ornithological fact to occupy his
attention until the evidence forced it upon him that
for six months in the year pheasants and partridges
are almost entirely insectivorous, not granivorous,
that they are never reapers of corn, but in the last
months of summer become gleaners, and so on
through the autumn and winter, and that any
damage they do the farmer is far superseded by the
multitude of wire-worms they destroy. The abuse
previous to the sitting of that Committee hurled at
pheasants and partridges by Bright and Co. had the
same degree of justice as that bestowed on the
much-libelled rook, who has not yet had his Com-
mittee. Mr. Bright's inquisition likewise disco-
vered that country gentlemen were not all such
cold blooded tyrants by birth and nature as they
were so frequently described tobe,nor game-keepers
such ferocious ruffians. Since the report of that
Committee Mr. Bright's mouth has been hermeti-
cally sealed on the subject of the Game Laws. I
regret that Mr. Forster's motion for a Committee
was not conceded. If it had it would have done
much to destroy the prejudice still lingering about
this much perverted and, as it seems to me, misun-
derstood subject. No doubt exists that in the early
part of this century the Game Laws were oppressive.
That a man must be worth £lOO per annum be-
fore he could shoot a head of game on a friend's land
seems monstrous; equally so that pheasants and
hares should be sacred to the Landocracy, every-
body else being tabooed and denied their use.
I will not stay to dwell on the woes of the
cruelly-used Corporate bodies, to whom bread sauce
and currant jelly were equally necessary for form-
ing sound Aldermanic judgment as turtle soup, and
who, although constituted judges of the people
were yet compelled to break statutes, and become
receivers of stolen game, or lack proper Common
Council nutriments. These evils have disappeared.
Game may be bought, and pheasants are much more
expensive than barn-door fowls. You may purchase
two couple of chickens for the cost of a brace of
pheasants. I would desire to know, then, why the
stealing of the cheaper bird is to be punished with
the consent of everybody under a statute properly
enforced, and the theft of the more valuable bird,
although equally illegal, apologised for by some,
and the proper enforcement of the Act objected to ?
Are the people denied any privilege of chasse which
they ever possessed? Certainly not. From the feudal
ages the right of killing ferce naturce has never been
possessed by the commonalty of England, but the
donjons of baronial castle and the excessive rigour
of barbarous laws have been brought to bear on
poachers from time immemorial. The infang thzef
and the outfang thief sive hand habend, sive back
barend were construed to include the stealers of
ferce naturce, and they were taught the value of
furca et fossa (gallows and grave) on the least re-
sistance to foresters and verderers. The old Game
Laws were shreds and remnants of this barbarism
and are worthily done away. Now, however, when
game has become private property, a saleable and
valuable article, instead of taking wise counsel how
this valuable right may be guarded and preserved
to the persons who alone have the right to possess
it, we are wandering into a sea of impracticability.
Mr. Forster himself, in his speech, has in more than
one instance assumed false premises, from which a
perusal of Mr. Bright's evidence would have saved
him. Mr. Forster asserts that " the amount of
poaching was determined more by the amount of
game preserved in any given neighboerhood, and
the density of the population, than anything else."
Evidence of the clearest kind proves exactly the re-
verse, the favourite resort of poachers (uniting, as
the same person usually does, the avocations of tur-
nip and potato stealer,hen-roost robber, sheep stealer,
and frequently burglar) is to be found on half-pre-
served manors where the preservation is lax; also
near large farms, owned and occupied by retired pro-
fessional men, merchants, or tradesmen,who like to
kill their own mutton and their own partridge, the
latter of which these poaching gentlemen generally
appropriate to themselves a couple of days before
the Ist of September, to the great disappointment
of a party of friends who come down bent on part-
ridgecide, and find empty stubbles. Strictly pre-
served places, with regular watchers, are seldom
attacked ; and, literally speaking, it is not manors
on which the most game is to be found, and which
are generally well guarded, it is not the property
of the aristocracy which is mostly attacked, but the
property of those whose means do not allow them
to keep up a staff of gamekeepers. With respect
to Mr. Forster's notions of rating land for game I
shall at present simply content myself with saying
that it is, in my humble thinking, an impossibility.
On this subject space forbids my saying more.
Lastly, one word as to the proposal of legislating
to diminish the amount of game. The late Duke of
Newcastle declared "that every man had a right
to do as he liked with his own." Lord Macaulay
and the late Sir Robert Peel declared that axiom
good and sound. You cannot legislate so as to pre-
vent a man from breeding, if he so please, one hun-
dred pheasants on every acre of his estate. But
the Duke of Newcastle turned out seventy tenants
one fine day for voting against his wishes. You
have no such complaint to make against the land-
owner ; tenants are always ready to take his farms,
and are not ready to quit them. Atl you can pos-
sibly have to ss y is, the number of bins may tempt
the gentleman with poaching proclivities to break
the law. My reply is, why is the poacher alone to
have this apology made for him ? Nobody pretends
that a vast flock of geese on a common is an apo-
logy for sealing a single gosling from it; nobody
would defend a sheep stealer on the ground that he
had taken one backward lamb from a flock of 500
fine sheep. How, then, can you defend the poacher
for walking off with five pounds' worth of pheasants
on the ground that he had left a thousand pounds'
worth behind him ? It is time the Legislature took
the Game Lewa in hand. Sooner or later we shall
have to follow the example of America—do away
, with all laws protecting game but those which