The Sun. — 1862-01-25 (London, England)

THE SUN.  LONDON, SATURDAY, JAN. 25, 1862.  it is pleasant, when we must condemn, to take commendation for our text. We have but too frequently had occosion 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 SARDANAPALTJS ,imitation of fieldsport—as little like to r( 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 administered by the very men who, as a class, sustain this carpet sport; the poacher is always convicted by magistrates, who are either game preservers, or who dine with game preservers, perhaps an hour or two after the conviction. The convictions are in half the cases hot 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 j edges would stop half way for want of evidence, half the cases, on which game preserving Justices of the Peace, exultingly 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 duellirg 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 invariably raise up two armies, one of poachers, the other watchers, officered by gamekeepers, 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 j