The Sun.
London, England, 1845-01-03 00:00:00

THE GAME-LAWS.

Whether the farmer will derive more advantage
by the agitation against game being taken up by
persons who are not game preservers, than if the
landlords took up the question, we shall not at pre-
sent affirm nor deny. But we can safely say this,
that many tenant farmers in all parts of England,
who feel the game to be a serious grievance, and
who have also been afraid of the Anti-Corn-law
League, are now much more friendly to the League,
since some of its leading members have come for-
ward as " farmers' friends" upon the game
question. We understand that Mr. Bright,
taking advantage of the extensive agencies and ma-
chinery of the League, has recently sent a circular
into every part of the kingdom, addressed to leading
agriculturists, asking information as to the injury
done to the crops by game. In a certain district in
Hampshire, remarkable alike. for the fertility of its
soil and the abundance of its game, several farmer►
have been consulted as to the replies which should be
made to the queries put to them, and they gave their
answers thus :
Question. " How many hares or rabbits are equal
to the keep of a sheep ?"
Answer. " Two—with what they eat and what
th

key damage."
Q. " What is the difference in value between a
farm on which game is preserved and one where it is
not ?"

A. " Twenty-five per cent."
Q. "Do landlords generally make an allowance
equal to the damage caused by game ?"
A. " They do not."
Q. "Is not game preserving very prejudicial to
good farming and to the interest of the farmers ?"
A. "It cannot be otherwise." _ _

Q. "Ti it not injurious to the morals and character
the farm labourers ?"

A. " Abundantly so."
It is then remarked by those who make these re-
plies, that Mr. Bright should not have confined his
inquiries to hares and rabbits. In one field, occu-
pied by a farmer on an estate covering six miles
of country, the whole estate swarming with game,
as many as two hundred pheasants have been
counted this year on twelve acres of barley stubble.
They had fed there during the ripening and harvest-
ing of the barley. Some of them were shot on the
stubble ; and one we are informed by a Hampshire
correspondent, which came into the possession of one
of the farmers who signs the replies to Mr. Bright,
was examined, and "contained in its crop 506 perfect
barleycorns, exclusive of some corns half digested,
which are all preserved and can be shown to any one."
It is then shown that these barleycorns are equal to a
gallon of barley each day for each hundred birds.
In another field, of twenty-eight acres, on the same
estate, but not let to a tenant, the enormous number
of 1,200 pheasants has been seen at once. This field
was sown with barley by the landlord for the use of
the birds ; but they were not confined to it, nor to
its locality. They invaded the farms. -A farmer,
writing some little time ago in the Salisbury and
Winchester Journal, states that he has known up-
wards of eight hundred grains of sound wheat, be-
sides a mass partly digested, taken from the. stomach
of one pheasant shot in a field newly sown. He
supposes that to be the food of the bird for one day,
that the seed lies thirty days in the ground, and
that therefore one pheasant extracts from , the seed
sown twenty-four thousand grains !' He asks what
the loss must be where hundreds- of pheasants flock
into the fields, as is the case in his neighbourhood ?
" It may be said," he observes, " that this calculation
is too high. I think not. In the case mentioned
everything was fair • the bird was shot by
a game-preserving nobleman, who gave it to a
tenant on the spot, and he had the curiosity to
examine it. Let those, however, who will not
believe, obtain one and examine it ; and then put
their calculation as low as possible, and it will prove
high enough to show that instead of doing the farmer
good, it inflicts on him an enormous injury." This
Hampshire farmer alludes here to assertions some-
times made that the pheasants relieve the farmers
of grubs and insects, and seldom injure their
corn. We believe where they are preserved in such
numbers they must destroy - a very considerable
quantity of corn. We understand at a farmer in
stteheped his seed
that county, who has this year
wheat in a liquid prepared from vitriol, with a view
to preventing a disease to which wheat is liable in his
►district, has had the misfortune to poison some of his

landlord's pheasants by so doing, and thereby get him-
self into serious trouble. This, at least, proves that
pheasants pick up a farmer's seed wheat. Scar cely a.
spring or summer comes, but we hear of diseases in
the wheat plant; and so loud, and apparently well-
founded, are the complaints, that we should think any
remedy would be applied that might be proved
effectual, and any experiment encouraged which
seemed reasonable. We see the manufacturers
effecting great changes for the public good by new
chemical appliances. But place them on a footing
with the farmer—let their property be exposed to
pilferers, and let it be a crime in them to use any
chemical ingredient which, wheii tasted or touched by
the pilferer, would destroy its life, and where would
be their progress in manufactures, or their advance-
ment in science ? We know nothing- of the worth
of the Hampshire farmer's wheat liquid. But we
think that diseases in wheat being so universally
complained of, it is unwise to restrict him from
making an experiment, merely because that experi-
ment caused the death of those birds which were
eating his seed wheat, which their owner had no
right to allow them to eat. We find some difference
of opinion as regards the amount of destruc-
tion actually done to the crops of the farmer
by the game. But one thing is certain, that in
districts where there are no artificial grasses, corn,
nor turnip crops raised, no hares nor pheasants,
nor even rabbits, thrive. The extensive dis-
trict of the New Forest, in Hampshire, proves
this. There the shelter, water, insects, worms,
acorns—everything but the farm fields—are in favour
of game ; and though well watched by keepers,
there the game will not accumulate. On the con-
trary, wherever an attempt is made to preserve game
in a corn-growing district, success is certain and easy.
The only enemies to it are the poachers. We learn
from another local paper that there are at the present
time one hundred persons in Winchester gaol for
offences against the game-laws ; or against those
laws which, though not called game-laws, are
used for the protection of game against
poachers. A considerable portion of these are com-
mitted from the neighbourhood of the great game
keeping estate already alluded to—where 1,200
pheasants were seen on twenty-eight acres of barley-
stubble. These prisoners are kept in prison at the
expense of the county—the heaviest part of which
is borne by the farmers. Their families are main-
tained in the workhouse also by the farmers and
yet the farmers are called upon to aid and assist
in preserving that game which so much injures them.
We have been informed that a nobleman, who is a
rigid preserver of game in the south, Old whose
estate includes parts of several parishes, has forbidden
his tenants to rake their stubble, or permit the
poor people to glean it. He has also forbidden
his tenants to turn their pigs out into their own
fields, either to eat up the lost ears and grains of
corn, or the acorns which drop from the trees in the
hedge-rows. All these must be left to the phea-
sants, even though every hedge-row and roadway
on the farms is included in the measurement for
which rent is paid. We are aware that such illibe-
rality as this cannot be charged against all landlords ;
far from it. But what between those who are
thus in active hostility, to their tenantry, and
the many more who injure their tenantry unin-
tentionally, it is no wonder that the farmers as
a body see little hope of being relieved by
the landlords from the game grievance. We
repeat, that the leading men of the League have
found the want of protection from game a means of
ingratiating themselves with farmers who did not lis-
ten to them on the corn-law question. And farmers
who once believed in the virtue of the corn-law are
now questioning if protection was ever meant for
them, when game is so increased every year upon
them, and all their complaints of it are so unheeded.
Thus Mr. Bright, merely as a member of the
League—as an advocate of free trade—as the enemy
of the corn-law—gains an advantageous position by
taking up this great grievance of the farmers. But
we presume that the injustice done to the tenant-
farmers, and the immorality spreading wider, and
deepening and hardening as it spreads, amongst the
poaching population, are what the Honourable Mem-
ber for Durham has had more especially in v;ew.
What he may be able to do, either for farmers or
poachers, as a Member of Parliament, is quite an-
other question. The subject is beset with difficulties.
But the farmers are glad of friendship from any
quarter on this question.—Chronicle.

COURSE OF EXCID
Amsterdam CF. 12 8
Ditto, at sight l2 6
Rotterdam 2U. 12 8i
Antwerp
Eiaraburgh M.B. 13 14
Altona l3 14
Paris, 3 days' sight 25 70
Ditto, 3 months 25 95
Marseilles
Bourdeaux 26 0
Frankfort on Maine- 122

Petorsburgh, 3Us 37
Berlin 7
Vienna, effse. f 1.3 M 957
lrieste, ditto
Madrid 361

Cadiz
Bilbao 36
Barcelona

Seville —

,NGE,-- (THIS DAY.)
Gibraltar .
Leghorn ,
Genoa 26 0
Milan
Venice .
Naples 39i
Palermo, ow ll9
Lisbon .
Oporto.
Rio Janne. 24
Bahia •
Buenos A y•
NewYoi k 'dyseight
PRICPA :fr '%ULLION, PER OX.
Foreigu bars../.,3 17 9
Tortuga: Gold Coin 3 17 5
New Doti; ;eons—. 0 0 0
New DGLlare 0 4 91
Silver tiers 0 4 11}

BANK OF ENGLAND.
(From Friday Night's Gazette.)
An Account, pursuant to the Act 7th and Bth of Vic-
toria, cap. 32, for the Week ending on Saturday, the.
28th day of December, 1844.

ISSUE DEPARTMENT.

.c.
Notes issued ... 28,200,165

£28,200,1651
M. MA
Dated the 2d day of Janw

NANKING D:
X.

Governmentdebtll,ols,loo
Other securities 2,984,900
Gold coin and

bullion
Silver bullion

£28,200,165
.RSHALL, Chief Cashier.
ary, 1845.

;PARTMENT.

Proprietors'capi-
tal 14,553,000
Rest 3,113,267
Publie deposits
(including Ex-
chequer,Savings
banks, Commis-
sioners of Na-
tional Debt, and
dividend ac-
counts)
Other deposits
Seven day and
other bills 984,540

G overnment secu-
rities (includ-
ingDeadWeight
Annuity)
Other securities 11,031,821
Notes
Gold and silver
coin

£34,327,491'

M. MA;
Dated the 2d day of Janui

£34,327,491
RSHALL, Chief Cashier.
Lary, 1845.

THE LONDON GAZETTE

(THIS EVENING.)

DOWNING-STREET, JAN. 1, 1545.

,
The Queen has been pleased to appoint Thomas
Thompson, Esq., to be Superintendent of Police fur the
Island of Ceylon.
CROWN-OFFICE, JAN. 3.
MEMBER RETURNED TO SERVE IN THIS PRESENT
PARLIAMENT.

BOROUGH OF DARTMOUTH.—Joseph Somes, Esq., in
the room of Sir John Henry Seale, Bart., deceased.

WAR-OFFICE, JAN. 3.
sth Regiment of Foot—Ensign G. S. Home, from the
55th Foot, to be Second Lieutenant,- vice Shipley, - who
exchanges, Jan. 3.
25th Foot—Lieut. C. J. S. Wallace, from. the 26th
Foot, to be Lieutenant, vice Roberts, who exchanges,
Jan. 3.
26th Foot—Lieut. B. M. Roberts, from the 25th Foot,
to be Lieutenant, vice C. J. S. Wallace, who exchanges,
Jan. 3.
38th Foot—Lieutenant T. Southall to be Captain,
without purchase, vice Robert Woodhou,e, who retires
upon full pay ; Ensign E. T. Gloster to be Lieutenant,
without purchase, vice Southall ; Gentleman Cadet C.
F. T. Daniell, from the Royal Military College, to be
Ensign, without purchase, vice Gloster, Jan. 3.
74th Foot—Lieutenant R. T. Farren to be Captain,
without purchase, vice Vernon, deceased ; Ensign J.
11. Lowndes to be Lieutenant, without purchase, vice
Farren ; Sergeant-Major. S. Pilkington to be Ensign,
without purchase, vice Lowndes, Jan, 3.
55th Foot—Second Lieut. R. Y. Shipley, from the
sth Foot, to be Ensign, vice Home, who exchanges,
Jan. 3.
Ist West Ind:a Regiment—Ensign G. Allan to be
Lieutenant, without purchase, vice Wieburg, who re-
signs ; Company Sergeants Major H. Jones to be Ensign,
vice Allan, Jan. 3.
Cape Mounted Riflemen--J. F. Boyes, Gent., to be
Ensign, without purchase, vice William Fraser, cashiered
by the sentence of a General Court-martial, Jan. 3.
HOSPITAL STAFF.—G. A. F. Shelton, M. 8., to be
Assistant-Surgeon to the Forces, vice Brown, deceased,
Jan. 3.:!
UNATTACHED.—Brevet Major John De Lacy, from
36th Foot, to be Major, without purchase, Jan. 3.
MEMORANDUM.—Tho Christian names of Second.
Lieutenant Deere, of the 21st Foot, are Philip Charles.
Commission by the Lord-Lieutenant of Worcestershire.
R. Spooner, Esq., to be Deputy Lieutenant, Dec. 16.
Commissions by the Lord Lieutenant of Buckingham-
shire.

Royal Bucks, or King's Own Militia—Sir H. Verney',
Bart., to be Major, vice air W. L. Young, deceased ;
R. E. Smith, Gent., to be Lieutenant, Nov. 29.
WHITEHALL, DEC. 27.
The Lord Chancellor has appointed George Edward
Sharland, of Gravesend, in the county of Kent, Gent.,
to be a Master Extraordinary in the High Court of
Chancery.