The Sun.
London, England, 1862-01-25 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, 'SATURDAY EVENING, JANUARY 25, 1862.

Commence at half-past 7.

ASTLEY'S ROYAL AMPHITHEATRE.-
Enthusiastic reception of Young GUNERIUS and
Madame HALVERSON. The Great Norwegian Wonders will
appear each Evening until further notice, together with a
host of Equestrian Novelties.

THE COLLEEN BAWN EVERY EVENING.

To be followed with the most daring Riders in the World.
Young Gunerius, Madlle. Halvorsen, and Mons. Goldkette.
Clown, Tom Fillls.
Concluding with the Grand Comic. Pantomime of
JOHNNY GILPIN'S RIDE TO EDMONTON.

A MORNING PERFORMANCE, commencing with the
Pantomime, every Saturday, at Two o'clock, during which
the Norwegian Wonders will appear.

In consequence of numerous applications, and the approach-
ing termination of the holidays, Mr. BATTY has the honour
to announce a Morning Performance of THE COLLEitN
BAWD (by special desire), which will take place on TUES-
DAY next, Jan. 28, commencing at Two o'clock, with the
marvellous feats of the Norwegian Wonders ; also intro-
ducing the Infant Perks and his beautilul Pony Fire Fly.
Stage Manager, Mr. W. Searle.

AND FINE

CANTERBURY HALL
ARTS GALLERY.
"THE ENCHANTED HASH " (SECOND EDITIO
by Mr. E. Marshall, with Eleven Wonderful Transformations
(the most talented performance ever attempted by a single
person), at a quarter-past ten. Also the following extraor-
dinary combination of Comic talent, viz.: Mr. Randall, Mr.
Frederick French, Mr. J. G. Forde, Miss Harriet Coveney,
and Miss Greene.

Grand Selections from LA TRAVIATA, by Mdlle. Negri,
Mr. Herbert, Sig-,nor Tivoli, and a powerful Chorus, at Ten
o'clock.

Musical Director, Mr. Jonghmans.
Admission—Hall, 6d. ; Stalls aad Balcony, ls.

'VICTOR JULIEN, " THE FLYING MAN,"
at CANTERBURY HALL, Every Evening at half-
past Nine o'clock.

I.IHE 0 X F O RD,
6, OXFORD-STREET,

OPEN EVERY EVENING AT 7 O'CLOCK

Selections alternately, from" Etnani," " Lucrezia Borgia,"
"La Circassienne, ' "La Traviata," " Simon Boccanegra,"
&c., by the entire Company, Full Band and Chorus.—Conduc-
tor, Mr. F. Jonghmans. Solos by Mr. Viotti Collins (the
great English violinist). And other attractive Entertain-
ments, the Comic portion by Miss Harriet Coveney, Messrs.
Sam Collins, E. Marshall, M. P. Foster, and W. RandalL
Hall, 6d.; Stalls and Balcony, Is. ; Private Boxes, 10s. 6d.

HIGH WATER AT LONDON BRIDGE.
THIS DAY.—Morning,, Bh. 34m.—Afternoon, 9h. 15m
To-monnow.-Morning, 9h. 58m.—Afternoon, 10h. 41m.

THE WEATHER.—SUN OFFICE, JANUARY2S, 1862,
THERMOMETER, IN THE SHADE.
50—highest since noon yesterday.
42—lowest this morning and during the night.
45—this day at noon.
BAROMETER-29.72.
WlND—South-Westerly; light, with rainy weather.

44p /4 4 1 eitp,_.),
_ . le
"el6l- t t'4
•"" ;

THE SUN.

LONDON, SATURDAY, JAN. 25, 1862.

it is pleasant, when we must condemn, to take
commendation for our text. We have but too fre-
' quently had occasion to censure the form which
game preserving has taken of late years, and its
fearful consequences in the increase of rural crime—
we must not, therefore, pass over a happy example
of the policy we have always recommended, and in
many eases known to be adopted with success, that
of leaving the matter in the hands of the tenants.
The Earl of ABERDEEN has given his adhesion to
this better game-law policy ; and we shall be
certain, therefore, to hear of no " game murders,"
" poaching affrays," " desperate and deadly
assaults on gamekeepers" on the Earl's estates.
The example cannot be too publicly made
known at a time when social reformers like
Sir JOHN PAKINGTON are calling for un-English
powers to be confided to the police in the interest
of the effeminate, and as the result proves, the
demoralising sport of battue shooting.
When one, not over large county, counts a
thousand poachers known to the police by name—
when eight thousand convictions of trespassing on
the sports of the battue gentry occur in one year,
the Warwick magistrates have no better remedy
than to ask for greater police power ! If battues
were a source of profit to the country generally, and
if they formed a part of our honest industry, of
course they must somehow be protected. They
are nothing► of the kind—they are but a
kind of SARDANAPALUS imitation of field-
sport—as little like to rf al sport as were the
hanging gardens to the mountains of Media. The
country thinks game is far too much protected now.
A code of laws of shameful stringency is admini-
stered by the very men who, as a class, sustain this
carpet sport; the poacher is always convicted by
magistrates, who are eit4r game preservers, or
who dine with game preservers, perhaps an hour or
two after the conviction. The convictions are in
half the cases not on evidence, but on rumoured
character; evidence that certainly would not "hang
a dog ;" and the unlucky accused quits for a gaol, or
a treadmill, and a discredited future life, a bench of
gentlemen who too frequently administer not justice,
but game- preserving revenge. Our judges would stop
half way for want of evidence, half the cases, on
which game preEerving Justices of the Peace, ex-
ultingly found a conviction.

Only yesterday we had, as usual, to record
another murder of a gamekeeper—who was with
others protecting " extensive preserves." But why
call this murder ? We used not to call duelling
murder—we do not call the conflicts in Missouri,
or on the Potomac, or between the Sumter and
her pursuers, murder. And looked at in their fair
light, these gamekeeper murders are loss of life in
battle, not murders. Where game is largely preserved
a class of adventurers who like living by the chase
as much as their betters like amusement by it, are
sure to arise. Between the hired retainers of the
Amusement party and the Livelihood party, a
deadly feud arises. We do not justify either party;
least of all the latter. We simply note the fact.
Preservers in variably raise up two armies, one of
poachers, the other of watchers, officered by game-
keepers, and commanded in chief by the Squire or
the Lord. The poacher does not steal upon the
gamekeeper in his cottage, murder him, and run
away with his money, he meets him in open field--
the gamekeeper generally commences the attack
in which he is so often slain. The result is so many
killed, wounded, and missing on each side. But as

the poachers are held by the United Squirearchy
for "rebels," if tie most gallant of them be caught
he dies the traitor's death.

Every one resident in the country will confess
that this is simply a faithful picture of the truth.
The war betweenthe poachers and game preservers
is a real war, and it is useless to conceal the fact.
There is nothing like it in regard to what is really
agricultural property. There are pilferers and
stealeis of such ?roperty, indeed, as of all other
property, but nothing else creates universally
where it exists a host of desperadoes and bri-
gands, if we Ike to call them so, in this
country. The oil smugglers, who used in our
younger days to furnish tales of their exploits
to half the villages on the coast, in their conflict
with excisemen and revenue officers, were the most
like the present raze of poachers. But they have
been almost extinguished; and how—by Sir JOHN
PAKINGTON'S process of more stringent laws P—just
the reverse. Smuggling has been made not worth
the hazard, and smugglers of the old class are now
but few. And this is the only resource left for the
sportsman ; though we confess an unwillingness to
allow that name to the man who only watches and
pops at the game driven to him; not shoots the
game which he has traversed the country to seek.
Lord ABERDEEN'S name will, we hope, have
some influence. We should be only too glad to see
it followed by the names of Royal and other Dukes
—at least by the absence of their names from the
pheasant- slaughtering exploits withwhichwe so often
see tkem associated. The evil has, in truth, reached
its crisis. The country cannot go on filling the
rural districts with criminals to gratify the most
unworthy farm of sport ever devised by indolence
apeing energy. That Lord AptiLDEP-x will have all
the winged game preserved for him which a real
sportsman can desire, we have no doubt. They do
not injure the tenant, and we never yet knew the
tenant, nor even the rural labourer, who did not
take pleasure in obliging a good landlord. Let the
gentlemen of England return to real sport, let them
do to their tenants as they would be done unto—
they will then have game enough, and to spare,
and poachers will be unknown.

Hardly anything whatever is known, or even,
for that matter, conjecturable, as to the Ministerial
programme for the coming session. Another fort-
night and it will have commenced ; yet even now,
upon the 25th of January, all is dubious as to the
measures to be inaugurated down at Westminster
by her MAJESTY'S Ministers on the 6th of February.
There is a tolerable certainty, of course, that the
once extremely "vexed" Question of Parliamentary
Reform is again (one can't help thinking very
wisely under the circumstances) to be given the
go by. There is, besides this, an exceeding proba-
bility that that other, at any rate last year, far
more "vexed" question in relation to the alternative
of the retention or the abolition of Church Rates,
will not be settled in 1862 any more than it was
settled in 1861. Discussed these vitally im-
portant subjects of debate will be, doubtless,
in an indirect way—that I:, through the ven-
tilation of them anew
by those thorns in
the sides of any or every Ministry, Whig or
Tory, Liberal Coalition, or Pure Conservative,
your genuine, rough and ready, highly impracti-
cable and obdurately outspoken " Independent
Members." There they sit below the gangway,
those independent members, upon either side of the
House, ever ready to teaze an Administrator, or
to raise the view halloo for the heartening onwards
of the eager pack of the Opposition. Upon any
topic you please, large or small, of the greatest
imaginable urgency or of the utmost possible in-
difference, they are prepared at all times, if only
the matter under their scrutiny appear in any way
to have been shirked by the responsible Ministers
cf the Crown, to raise the cry, " Stole away !" and
so—Ilillo! after the recusant Administration, helter-
skelter, through all the turns and doubles of a Par-
liamentary chase, night after night, in what usually
turns out to be a wholly bootless discussion.
It was in this manner that so much time
was needlessly wasted last year, particularly
on Wednesdays ! And all this simply because the
initiative was not taken by those we only could
hope to bring matters of this kind to a satisfactory
issue, namely, the occupants of the Treasury Bench,
backed by all the organized energies and numbers
marshalled under the banners of the Government.
Yet, as every one has had time before now
thoroughly to appreciate, the session of 1861 was
not by any means the fruitless session at first sup-
posed. A substantial tome * enough, edited, not
inappropriately, by a compiler and annotator of
the significant name of BIGG, has, in effect, proved
the worth of the 24th and 25th Vic-
toria to absolute demonstration. It has
proved it through upwards of one thousand pages,
comprising within them the whole of the Public
General Statutes passed in 1861—that is, in the
session 24 and 25 of VICTORIA, from cap. 1 to cap.
134 inclusively. Statutes ranging over themes as
various as the Appropriation of Seats (Sudbury and
St.Albans)—theCopyright of Designs—the Princess
ALICE'S Annuity—East India Civil Service—East
India Courts of Judicature—East Indian Loan—
Malicious Injuries to Property—University Elec-
tions—and, to conclude with, by way of example,
and as sufficiently suggestive in itself, of the prac-
tical advance made last year in the way of beneficial
legislation—in one word, Bankruptcy.
Now there cannot be a moment's doubt of it, in
regard to the parliamentary session at this moment
upon the eve of eommencing, that while, in
familiar words, much has unquestionably been
done in the 24 and 25 VICTORIA, yet more remains
" to do" in the same way of wholesome legislation
in the 25 and 26 VICTORIA, about to bo inaugurated
within a fortnight's time, namely, on the 6th of the
ensuing month of February.
Supposing even that the once all-important but
now almost shelved question of Parliamentary Re-
form to be given again (as we have conjectured
already cannot but be deemed judicious under the
circumstances of the case) the go by—Supposing
that other great and really in itself much urgent
question (coming home as it does perpetually, in
Baconian:phrase, to "men's businesse and bosomes")
the question as to the continuance or the abrogation
of Church Rates
as at present levied; supposing
this, we say, also in its turn to be quietly cushioned
or dexterouslyset aside for another twelvemonth, are
there not other subjects for wholesome legislation—
are there not other openings for practical and bene-
ficial reforms, that clamour loudly for the application
to them of the energies of those who are really re-
sponsible for the
Wise and judicious direction of
the sessional labours
of the Legislature, meaning,
of course, no other than her MAJESTY'S Mini-
sters ? The answer to this is hardly to be made, so to
speak, by way ofsolo--it can, in reason, be
nothing less than chee,lll. There are countless
legal reforms, social reforms, sanitary reforms,
and commercial reforms, that crowd, upon the
instant, upon every
reflective politician's recollec-
tion, so soon as the query above articulated is
fairly put. One remembers, among other indi-

* The Revised Statute Book ; a Collection of Public Sta-
tutes passed in 24 and 25 Vic., 1861. Unabridged. With
Tables and Index. Edited by JAMES Blau, Esq. One
Vol., pp. 1005, WATERLOW and Soxs, 49, Parliament-
street.