The Sun.
London, England, 1849-04-26 00:00:00

THE GAME LAWS.

In addition to the heavy hit of charges, which, ac the
farmer's friend, we have lattn.y had occ,t-ion to exhihit
against a large portion of the landed propti- tar) of this
cotuVry, we have now to exhibit tt,e rt.l etaich it.fl'etrd
on the tenant-farmers exclusivoly, we might almost say
universally, by the operation of the game- laws.
We are aware that there among lancifittls some, we
hope many, honourable exeptions to that rceltles's,
ruthless spirit of game preserving by R h:elt most of
the rural gentry are infected. 'natever else of
burdens may be taken from the shoulders of the
tenant•farmer, either by landlords themselves or the
Legislature, we are fully persuaded that no such
substantial relief will be afforded to him as shall enable
him to sustain the severe competition to which ho will
henceforward find himself exposed, so long as this im-
pediment to the spirited outlay of capital, and the
earnest application of skilful industry, is allowed to re-
main in the active operation in which it now exists in
many districts.
It is of no use for a nobleman or gentleman to say,
" I make an abatement of rent to my tenantry suffi-
cient to cover the loss which they sustain by my gam©
preserves." When these preserves—more especially of
hares and rabbits—are allowed to swell out to the extent
to which they are carried on numerous estates, we are
fully persuaded that no such satisfactory abatement ever
takes place—the tenants themselves being judges; and
it is upon this judgment that everything iu the question
depends.
We have, it is true, heard a tenant-farmer, when
challenged in public by his landlord in reference to
this subject, admit that he was satisfied by the abate-
ment of rent made to him for the damage done to his
crops by the game on the estate ; but we never heard
a farmer express his opinion on the subject in private,
but that it drew from him the most bitter invectives
against the landlord or his agents, for making him, or
allowing him to be made by others, the victim of such
a degrading and ruinous system of spoliation. We say
a degrading system—and we use the term advisedly—
for we are certain that every intelligent, high-spirited
agriculturist feels himself more degraded by the game-
laws than by any other circumstance connected with the
tenure of his land.

We just invite our readers, in order that they may
the better be enabled to enter into the feelings of the
farmer upon this subject, to accompany us into the
lands of a personal friend of ours—an industrious,
hard-working man, and, withal, as good a practical
farmer as need to walk over the broad acres of Eng-
land. This person rents a farm of considerable ex-
tent in a certain division of this county. His landlord is
a liberal Peer; but an inveterate, despotic, mercenary
game preserver. Well, but to the farm: wherever you
may go—whatever cropping you may inspect—there, we
will engage for it, you shall encounter hares, not in units
or tens merely, but by scores; and those in addition to a
large amount of feathered game, both partridges and phea-
sants. Within the last fortnight, the occupier of this farm
was induced one evening to visit a field of seeds, in order
to ascertain whether they would bear stocking for a few
weeks with about forty or fifty ewes and their lambs,
when, to his extreme mortification, he found that the
crop, so valuable to him at this season of the year, and
more especially for the purpose for which it was then
required, had been literally eaten close down by the
hares, not fewer than eighty of those vermin being at
the time of his visit engaged in quietly feeding upon
them.

Now, we ask, was it in human nature that a man
should feel other than at once indignant and degraded
by such a circumstance as this. If there was a single
practice of bile or bitterness, in such a constitu•
tion, could the man do other than curse the selfish
despotism which inflicted such a wrong upon him—
was there a single spark of pride in his bosom, could
he do other than feel the flush of shame upon his cheek,
from the reflection that he was compelled to witness
such a spoliation of his property, and yet dare not,
through dread of his landlord's myrmidons watching his
movements, perhaps through the apertures of half-a-
dozen hedges about him, to fray the vermin from their
prey ? _

Upon this farm of about 400 acres, and upon many
others of a similar extent iu this county, it has been
estimated that, at scarcely any period of the year, is
there fewer than five hundred head of four-footed game
to be found, besides birds, and at particular seasons
many more.

Look at this picture again, gentle reader ! Eighty old
strong hares feeding altogether upon about twelve acres
of clover seeds, and the tenant of this land—the man by
whose sweat and toil, and the application of whose hard-
earned capital the crop has been raised, compelled to
stand by and dare not so much as clap his hands—or
fling up his hat—or give them an halloo, to drive them
away, in order to make room for his ewes and lambs,
without incurring his landlord's displeasure—or, mayhap,
subjecting himself to the costs of an infraction of the
game-laws.

Why—was there over anything equal to this rural
despotism, in a state of society like ours, in any
country, or, at any period of the world's history ! And
what adds to the enormity of the tyranny is, that, in
numerous instances, as in the case under considera-
tion—the proprietor, after all, is not a man who takes
pleasure in field-sports—one who has a peculiar taste
for this description of butchery himself, and lives
jollily and cheerfully among his tenzntry—dispensing to
those who have fed the animals the proceeds of his days
of slaughter—but, one who, atter having drawn
from the occupiers of his lands the last shilling for
their use, which aristocratical cupidity can extort from
patient industry —either re-lets, as it were, the laud
to some amateur game-butcher ; or else, employs
a little army of ignorant, and oftentimes brutal watchers
and keepers under him to commit trespass upon his
tenant's occupation and sell the game, fed at their ex•
pense, in the public market of some neighbouring town
for his own exclusive benefit; and these are the acts, for-
sooth, of farmers' friends! and it is to uphold, in all its
odious integrity, a system like to this, that the cry fur
Protection to Native Industry'—or, in other words to
enhance the price of bread by a penny a pound to the
labouring population, by shutting out the competition
of the foreign grower— is raised by the mass of landed
proprietors, and their retainers in all parts of the
country.
But is it possible to suppose that such hollow pro-
fessions of friendship shall not be seen through—or
such profligate invasions of the rights of property as
are involved in game preserves, by those who are
ostensibly the peculiar conservators of property,
should be much longer tolerated in a nation where
the bulk of the people possess such an innate love of
justice—such a correct appreciation of the natural
claims of industry as in this country ? Certainly not !
the day for the entire overthrow of this debasing, de-
moralising system of feudal plundering of the cultivators
of the soil may not have fully arrived—but it is o❑ the
way, and certainly near at hand. We will resume the
consideration of this subject next week, when we will
endeavour to place the injurious operation of these
laws under another aspect to our readers.—Nottingham
Mercury.

THE EMBEZZLEMENT at LEEDS.
On Monday, Mr. Peter Mann, chief clerk of the Leeds
Waterworks Company, was further examined before
the sitting magistrates at the Court-house, Leeds,
on a charge of having embezzled a sum of
nearly 5,0001, the property of his employers,
the Waterworks Company. The investigation, which
was taken before Mr. Carbutt, Mr. Monkland, and other
justices, occupied a considerable time, in consequence
of the necessary reference to the books in which the ac-
counts of the company kept by the prisoner were entered,
but the facts lay within a very narrow compass. Mr. N.
Preston, a clerk in the service of the company, produced
a number of "rent cash-books," each being made for a
separate half-year, which purported to contain the parti-
culars of the various sums received on account of water
rents by the collectors, and paid to the primmer. The
entries of these sums in the rent cash-books, as
well as in the general cash book, into which the
sums purporting to have been so received were, or
should have been, correctly entered, were in the hand-
writing of the prisoner during the year 1847, but during
the whole of that year the entries in the general cash
book do not correspond with the entries of the receipts
from the collectors of the water rents. There is an
entry of the accounts for the year 1847, having been
audited by two directors on the 6th of May, 1848, but
witness was not present. The " rent cash-books" were
at hand for audit if they had been required, as well as
the general cash-book. In 1848, during the ab-
sence of Mr. Mann, Mr. Preston was in the habit of
receiving the rents from the collectors, and handing
the cash-box and the key to Mr. Mann, on the follow-
ing morning, or the morning of the second day, but
he made no entry in the " rent cash-book," leaving that
to be done by the prisoner. The sums paid in by the
collectors were entered in their collecting books
by themselves or other clerks. During Mr. Mann's
absence for three months of that year (1848) Mr.
Preston received the rents from the collectors, and
made payment thereof to the treasurers, Messrs. Beckett
and Co. The accounts for 1848 have nit yet been audited,
in consequence of the Michaelmas survey of emp'y pro.
pert} not having been completed, and other charges for
water supplied under special circumstances, not having
been adjusted. Mr. Robert Bird, who had been a col-
lector, of the oompany since February, 1846, states that
his duty was to go to the office of the company every
night, and there to enter the water rents he had collected
during the day in a book called the collector's water rent
book. When he had so entered them in detail, he had
to make out an account on a piece of paper specifying
each portion of the year to which the accounts received
related, as sometimes there were arrears received. The
accounts of water rents were formerly presented half-
yearly, but now quarterly. Mr. Mann signed a receipt
in the book in red ink for the sums the collectors paid
him, and it was his duty to enter those sums in the " rent
cash-book." All the entries made by Mr. Mann in his
presence were correctly made in the collector's water-
rent book; but sometimes it happened that Mr. Mann
was not at the office in the evening, and then he 1: ft the
money with another clerk, who locked it up !a a cash.
box and gave it to Mr. Mann when he came, and wit
nese frequently found when he went to the office next
morning that Mr. Mann had correctly entered the money
he had left over night before his arrival. All the pay-
ments he made to Mr. Mann were in that manner cor-
rectly entered.—Mr. Richard Newton, another collector,
gave similar evidence as to the course of business, and
said that the prisoner had always correctly receipted at
the foot of the daily accounts the moneys he paid him or
left for him.—Mr, Preston, on being recalled, said that
ler the last three or four years the arrears of rents re-
ceived are partly in the handwriting of other clerks, and
for the last three or four qu r(ers the entries in the rent
cash book are principally in the handwriting of other
clerks —Mr. Mallinson, a ledger clerk in the batik of
Mes4rs. Beckett and Co., the tra-asnrers to the N.Va'er-
works Company, referred to a pass book showing the
account between the bank and the company from
January 1, 1841, to December 31, 1847, and a sub-
sequent book bringing down the account to the present

time. The moneys were generally paid in by Mr. Mann;
eectisionatly by Mr. Preston. The money was generally
drawn out by cheques signed by di; ectors, aed re-
cently they have: beets countersic,rt,ed to the chief clerk.
The 1)74,, WEIS P.i; the eial by
the three geutlemen who were rox.aLore of the barou
fluid Pt.c,..;unts ilk 1848, anti dtted October 18; there
were also the initials of two of the directors.—
Mr. J. R. Bywater said that be had been
employed during the whole of last week in. jar-esti-
geting the accouots of the Leeds Waterwerks Com-
pany. He had looked into the rent cash-books par-
tially, but more particularly into those from Feb. 28,
1847, to Dec. 31, 1847, and those from Jan. 1 to Dee. 31,
1848, and from the latter period to :March 31, 1849.
Witness produced an account which he had drawn
out of the sums received by Mr. Mann from the col-
lectors, as shown by the rent cash-books, and also
the amounts yield by him to Messrs. B dcett and
Co., during the ten months from February 28, 1847,
to December 31, 1847, which showed a balance against
him during that period of 1.3101. Ils. sd. The
rent cash-books from which this account was made up,
do not appear on the face of them to have been before
the auditors, thetigh there was an audit of the accounts
for that period, by the company's auditors on the 6th of
May, 1648, and on the 18th of October by the auditors
of the town council. The general cashbook, which ap-
pears to have been before the auditors, agrees, so far
as relates to the payments made by Mr. Mann to the
treasurers during those ten months, with the pass-
book of Messrs. Beckett and Co. He was not able
to mention any particular sum which Mr. Mann had
received from the collectors, and had withheld, as he paid
in several days' receipts at one time, or at least a sum on
account of those receipts. The cash account fur 1848 had
not yet been balanced and consequently not audited ;
but a " rest " was taken of the receipts to Dec. 31, 1848,
and that showed that the prisoner bad paid to the trea
surer 3,0501. 4s. Id. less than he appeared, by the rent-
cash-book kept by him, to have received from the collector
during that year. In the three months ending 31st
March, 1849, there was a similar deficiency of 3421.15. 2d.,
making an aggregate deficiency of 4,7831. 16s. Bd. As
the witness was unable to state any particular sums
which the prisoner had received and not paid over, the
further examination was adjourned until Monday next,
for that to be ascertained.