The Sun.
London, England, 1862-09-24 00:00:00

THE NEW GAME LAW.

A magistrate, in a letter to a contemporary, says, "As you
may be interested in knowing how completely your predic-
tions regarding the new Game Bill have been verified, I send
you an account of the working of the new act in this neigh-
bourhood.

On a Friday morning, at 6 o'clock, three known poachers
are seen by private watchers returning home by a public
road with three lurcher dogs, and heavily laden. The
watchers have no right, under the recent Act, to meddle
with them. Twelve hours later a brother of one of these
poachers, himself also a known poacher, drives to the rail-
way station with a hamper, directed to a Lonct ,n poulterer.
A policeman, by chance there, searches the hamper, finds
and seizes 10 hares and some partridges. Appearing on the
following Wednesday before the magistrates, the defendant
says he bred the hares, &c., in his yard—a simple impossi-
bility. As the police are unable to prove what lands his
friends had been upon, the defendant is acquitted, and the
game restored to him. Not being so sweet on Wednesday as
it was on Friday the defendant sues the police in the County
Court for damage; this case is pending. He entertains the
gang to supper, where they drink the health of the magi-
strates and of those members of the House of Commons who
refused to sanction that the poacher should prove an honest
possession. He tells the police that the supper is paid for
out of the fine he came prepared to pay, and that "they
can carry on the trade as well as ever." I know of one
check for £29, drawn by the same London poulterer, which
this defendant has recently cashed, and which was shown
to many labourers of the parish. Each member of the
gang subscribes so much a week to a fund, from which all
fines are immediately paid, without any inconvenience to
himself, whenever a conviction is obtained.

Does not this state of the law offer a sore temptation to
the honest and industrious labourer to follow the same
course ? He finds these men doing no work and having
plenty of money, while he must work hard, be laughed at
for doing so, and after all be much worse off than those
who, but for the Legislature, would be called, not poachers,
but thieves.

VARIE7 lES.

(From Fun.)

THE PACIFIC Male,---John Bright.
A QIIESTION TOR FARADAY.—When the thermometer
falls, how often, on an average, does it break ?
A CRACKED J.A.R.—John Arthur Roebuck is at
Vienna, making himself agreeable to that most amiable
potentate, the Emperor of Austria. So well does he suc-
ceed, that he is known among the courtiers as the " Honey
J.A.R."

A FRIEND AT A PINCH,—The Vice—at a charity
dinner.

PILING UP THE AGONY.—WO read that, in com-
mencing the works for the Thames embankment, the first
pile was driven opposite the mansion of the Duke of Buc-
leuch. What a piece of fiendish malignity on the part of
the contractors, thus to pile up the agony on the unhappy
duke!

LITERARY INTELLIGENCE.—There is no foundation for
the report that Calcraft is now starting a paper under the
title of the Daily IVoose.
A RlDDLE.—(Dedicated to the School of Cookery.)—
When is ajelty like a dolly ?—When there's eyas•in-glass-
in it.

The Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs has pub-
lished a notice received from M, Rucker, Belgian Consul at
Riga, to the effect that the port charges on vessels there
have been recently reduced, especially on 5.... of
shipslarge
tonaa4e,