The Sun.
London, England, 1845-02-28 00:00:00

that he had only had ten days' wore within the last month—
that he was in great distress, and that his children had not a
bit of bread to eat. Mr. Stone, the magistrate, a most ap-
propriate name, for it rev :red a heart of stone to take the
course which that gentleman took in this case ; he said the
prisoner was liable to three months' imprisonment and hard
labour, but as this was the first offence—what extraordinary
views some men take of misery !—he would sentence him only
to six weeks' imprisonment and hard labour, and to
find sureties, himself in ten pounds, and two others
in 51. each, and in default thereof to be further imprisoned,
with hard- labour, for six months. He presumed this gentle-
inan was still a magistrate, but he asked the I-louse to observe,
that here was a man who said that he had got only ten days'
work for the last month, his children had not a bit of bread to
eat, and yet a man sitting on the bench to distribute justice,
under the constitution of this country, sentences him, not only
to three months' imprisonment and held labour, but orders
him to find sureties likewise—a man who had not constant
work, and when he had, did not earn more than 7s. or Bs. a-week,
ordered to find sureties !—( Hear, hear.) What most be the
opinion of the public on this case? Why, every newspaper, of
whatever politics, took it up and denounced it as one of the
most fl igrent instances of cruelty that had ever been inflicted
by a court ofj ustice. But there werea multitude of such cases. The
sympathy of the country was so much enlisted in this cass! that
money was sent from all parts of the country. A five-pound
note was sent in a letter, the tine was paid, and the man was
liberated. He ( Mr. Bright) hoped that some of this poor
man's friends took care to remove him from a district in which
he had suffered this punishment, and conducted him to some
honest district where justice for an offence against the game-
laws was not dispensed by a bench which had invariably shown
the interest which it felt in the preservation of came. —( Hear,
hear.) If either of these cases of Hibburn or of Ashby-de•
la-Zouch came before a jury, what would be the consequence?
One of the principles of t he Constitution was, net only that a
man was to be tried by a jury, but he was to be tried by his
Peers. Agricultural or manufacturing labourers were not
often on juries, nor did they often have a jury of Peers, but
in this case they had not even a jury of disinterested
persons. But it came before a bench who entertained strong
feelings in favour of the preservation of game. When the
Right Honourable Baronet brought forward his Pill last
session for the regulation of fucteries, he took care to intro-
duce a clause to prevent the owns rs of factories from sitting on
the bench when factory cases were to be disposed of.—( Hear,
hear.) And why should a different principle be applied
to the owners of mills and to the owners of land? Why
should they consent to a different system from that which was
practised in reference to millowners in Lancashire, Yorkshire, or
any other county ? Those poor men when brought before the
bench had neither counsel nor attorney. It might be said the
law empowered them to obtain such aid? But where was the
money to come from? Virtually they were excluded from
such assistance. So here was a poor labourer dragged before a
bench of magistrates, eho were enthusiastic in the preserva-
tion of game, without any assistance whatever, and fined and
imprisoned as these magistrates thought fit. Yet this was
called law and justice in this country. He did not blame the
magistrates so much as the law itself. He supposed if there
were magistrates at all, they must execute the law. But he
thought those who acted in the manner described, if they were
not men of very little feeling, would join with him in his en-
deavour to abolish, or at least modify, these cruel laws, so that
the feelings of the community might not be outraged by the re-
currence of such cases.—( Hear, hear.) In considering the
amount of criminality which attached to a labourer's infringe-
ment of the game-laws, some consideration ought to be made
with respect to the amount of temptation which was pre-
sented to him.—( Hear, hear.) They hail an authority
altogether indisputable that temptation in some districts was
more than flesh and blood could stand. It had been stated be-
fore a Committee, cf which the Hon. Member for Wiltshire
(Mr. Benett) was a Member, that agricultural poachers were
more successful because they began early; the boy of twelve
years of age sets snares with his father. He had received a
letter from Huntingdon on this subject, in which it was stated
that the shepherd boys, when they left their work at twilight,
seeing hares running about in all directions, were so much
tempted that they could not resist the temptation; and the
writer further stated that poaching was more injurious to boy ;
than public-houses.—( Hear.) They were brought up in a
manner so as not to believe that any moral guilt attached to an
infringement of the game-laws. He hoped Hon. Members
had read the 9th Report of the Inspectors of Prisons, and
they would there find the strong language which Mr. Williams
used on this subject. The substance of what he stated was, that
with most other offenders there was some hope of reformation
by prison discipline, but that those confined for poach-
ing were very seldom reclaimed.—( Hear, hear.)
He held in his hand also the testimony of chaplains who
attended prisoners, and they stated that argument, admonition,
entreaty, were all alike unavailing, in trying to induce those
prisoners to admit that they felt they had committed any moral
offence ; and they add that there was more sympathy for those
people than any other class of offenders. Their invariable
answer was, that the law was oppressive, and that they hail as
good a right as others to those hares. In the report of the year
1823 on this subject, Stafford, the Bow-street officer, stated,
in answer to questions put to him, that it appeared to him that
those who were taken for offences against the game-laws did not
at all conceive that they had taken any portion of the property
of another; and Mr. Hunt, afterwards a Member of that House,
said that the large quantity of game in the country was too
strong a temptation to the people to resist, and that they did
not conceive they had taken anybody's property.—(Hear,
hear.) Mr. Benett, the Member ter Wiltshire, in his an.
swer, stated that neither in the lower order, in the class a little
higher, nor in the occupiers, was it deemed any disgrace to be
punished for an offence against the game-laws. Hon. Members
might say that all this arose from a confused idea as to the right
of property; but he ( Mr. Bright) would contend that the right of
parties to game was not at all so distinct as might be imagined ;
if it were, it was very odd that that. House should pass a law to
prevent the sale of game ; and it was the only description of
property against the sale of which any law had ever been passed.
If game were property, it should not be forgotten that it could
not be identified or impounded if found straying like a pig or
other animal. But notwithstanding that, if a man were caught
with a hare or a rabbit in his hand, or even a piece of copper
wire and a string, or taking a gun from a smith's shop across a
field, he was sure to be imprisoned and otherwise punished. A
man might meet a hare crossing the wood and kill it ; but this
Horse had hedged round these animals with so many laws that
the man was liable to be punished very severely. To so great
an extent had poaching been encouraged by those laws, that in a
place in Suffolk there was a poacher who was said to be
carrying on a " very respectable" trade—(Laughter)—he
employed thirty or forty men, sent his hampers to market, and
received his remittances and paid his men as regularly as any
man in any other line of business.—( Hear, hear.) Then,
again, the poachers on Lord Rendelsham's and the Mar-
quis of Hertford's estates carried their calling so far that they
had formed a society and subscribed a fund for their mutual
protection, feting counsel, &c.—( Hear, hear, and laughter.)
These were men who had led this Lfe so long that they were
now in fact almost shut out from the pale of society, and led a
kind of savage life; and this he thought showed how little a
breach of the game-laws was regarded as an offence against
moral law. In a country newspaper lately, the obituary. con-
tained an account of the death of a notorious poacher, but it
said that in every other respect he was a highly-respectable indi-
vidual, and was so esteemed in his neighbourhood that he was
actually entrusted with his own commitment, when convicted
of ass offence.—( Hear, hear, and laughter.) It sometimes
happened that landlords employed poachers as game-keepers ;
but he would ask, would any man in business promote a clerk
whom he might have found with his hand in his till ?—( Hear,
hear.) He had dwelt long upon this subject, but he did
think he might be excused as this was a subject of no ordinary
interest, and not one which usually occupied the debates of the,
House.—(Hear, hear.) In the past session of Parliament,
he moved for certain returns upon this subject,
and by them it appeared that at one assizes there
were 152 convictions in England and Wales for
offences against the game-laws ; and 4,377 at the quarter ses-
sions ; of those 35 had been sentenced to transportation at the
assizes and 5 at the sessions, and 112 to imprisonment; others
had been sentenced to pay a fine of 2/., and others again to
seven weeks' imprisonment. It would be very easy for Hon.
Member of that House to throw down a fine of 21. Many of
them spent as much in a day. But when a poor labourer was
fined that sum for an infraction of the game-laws, he would
ask, was it not a monstrous punishment when compared with
the offence, arid was calculated to destroy all respect for the
law, and all confidence in the justice and impartiality of the
Legislature.—( Hear, hear.) He would now call attention to
another return of still deeper interest and importance than that
he had read. By that return it appeared that in the year 1842-
43, no fewer than 40 gamekeepers had been killed ; and of those
the verdicts of the coroner's juries were wilful murder in 25
cases. In the case of the murder of Lord Knowsley's game-
keeper, both he and the poachers fired; the latter escaped, the
former was shot, and, on his death-bed, he expressed how
pleased he felt at not having shot the poacher.—( Hear.)
No fewer than five persons were convicted for this offence; one
of them was hanged, and the others had been sent to the penal
colonies, leaving wives and helpless families destitute behind
them, with a stain upon their names.—(Hear, hear.) This
was the class of grievances attending those game-laws that led
him, mature than any other, to bring this subject before the
House ; and he could not help saying that he could not under-
stand how any man could set up his oen personal enjoyment in
comparison with a system that led to such great and grievous
evils.—( Hear, hear.) The year 1844 had also its catalogue
of vietims.—( Hear.) In one of those desperate en-
counters between gamekeepers and poachers, two of the latter
were killed, and two men were hanged for their murder, under
circumstances by no means satisfactory, both of them having
protested on the scaffold, with a solemnity of manner that it
would be impossible to imagine could be feigned at such an
awful moment, that they had no hand, act, or part, in those
murders. Then, again, he would say, there were incidents
which made it worth the while of the Legislature to consider,
whether the mere amusement of a very small portion of the
community should be kept up at such an awful expense.—
( Hear, hear.) He did nut mean to say that there should be
no game, nor laws affecting game ; but he made these state-
ments in order to show the lamentable consequences attending
the present state of those laws, and to show that he had a strong
claim upon that House for the ammittee he asked for.—( Hear,
hear.) There was another case which he had well nigh for-
gotten to state; it was that of a man who had been sentenced
to be transported for stealing rabbits in Staffordshire ; and
that man's mind became so affected at the awful penalty
he was about to suffer for this act, that he put an
end to his existence in the prison. (Hear, hear. )
There was another case of a young person of sixteen years of
age, who went shooting sparrows, but a pheasant coming in
his way, he shot it also. Was there any one of those who
heard him who would deny that he would not have done the
same at the age of sixteen ?—( Hear, hear.) But for this he
was threatened with the law, and having all its consequences
before him, he hanged himself to escape the troubles he saw
before him in this world.—( Hear, hear.) What a system
must that be which produced these results ! It was said that
gentlemen kept gamekeepers to be spies over those very farmers
who paid dearly for their land.—(Hear.) It was a system of
terrorism injurious in its effect upon the labouring classes,
and detrimental to the agricultural interest. He did not be-
lieve that any Gentleman in that House would oppose his
motion for an inquiry into such a system, except, perhaps, the
Hon. Member for Gloucestershire (Mr. G. Berkeley)—
(Laughter)—who had written a pamphlet in defence of it.
They had heard of a Berkeleian theory before, which denied
the existence of matter.—( Laughter.) That was the doctrine
of immateriality, but in this new theory there was nothing
of that kind, for " punches in the head, and blows before
words"—(Laughter)—had:samething very material and sub-
stantial about them.—(Laughter.) But he would not attempt
to answer the arguments in that pamphlet, for it was its own
bane and antidote. But one singular discovery which it con-
tained was, that the British Constitution lauded as it was—
(and it was net without some merit)—and liberty of conscience
were, in some way or other, interested in the preservation of
great heads of game. —(Laughter.) He had often said
harsh things of the proprietors of land, but he had
never said anything so harsh of them as those persons
who defended the preservation of game and the Cathie system ,
and who maintained that it was the enthusiasm of the chase
which kept gentlemen upon their paternal estates. His opinion
was, that there were other pursuits besides those connected with
the preservation of game, which it would better become
them to follow, and which would be better for the country.
Why, there was not a finer position in the world, than that of
a gentleman of property who attended to his own estate—he
had an oppor•uoity of doing untold good.—( Hear, hear.) lie
might look after his tenants—watch over the physical comforts
of his labourers, attend to their cottages, and see that they
were neat and commodious—build schools, and provide for the
education of the poor.— ( ;fear, hear.) Those were pleasures
as great as those of the chase, and far better, because the plea-
sure of doing good never tired—( Hear)—and those gentlemen