1828.] The Game Laws. 117 



mans and defend such a law at the present day, does seem to be beyond 

 comprehension ! 



The persons qualified by " descent/' or mere natural and corporal 

 worthiness, to kill game independent of any possession of " estate/' are 

 " the eldest sons of esquires, and persons of higher degree" the cir- 

 cumstances and condition necessary to give which titles or distinc- 

 tions have been already shortly described. Now we wish to ask, what 

 circumstance of divinity it is about these people themselves devoid of 

 estate, and descended from, and claiming in right of persons who per- 

 haps never possessed a shilling of estate* that gives them a title to 

 property, produced by persons with whom they have neither proximately 

 or remotely any connexion ? We say nothing about the weakness and 

 culpable inefficiency of a law, which, wilfully and constantly as if of 

 purpose raises a question, which those who should try it have no 

 ready means of determining. For there is no outward or visible sign, 

 by which an " unqualified" man, shooting where he is unknown, can be 

 distinguished from a " qualified" man ! No mark no document 

 beyond the assertion of the party himself by which it can be ascer- 

 tained, whether a stranger, shooting in Hampshire or Yorkshire, be the 

 eldest son, or the second son or any son at all of the " esquire" in 

 Kent or Essex, whose name he thinks proper to assume ! And, there- 

 fore, for any man who is content to lie, the law, most wisely and praise- 

 worthily, makes a peculiar and beneficial opening: and the only 

 individual on whom the prohibition presses, is the man whose sense of 

 honour forbids him to evade it. But we pass over all these minor cir- 

 cumstances of excellence, to come to that which has always seemed to 

 us to be the point of ultra perfection in this law of " qualification by 

 descent :" to wit, the provision, that, while the son of the " esquire" or 

 " person of higher degree," is qualified the " esquire," or " person of 

 higher degree," himself, is NOT ! By a departure from the common 

 principles of law, a man is enabled, upon this description of property, 

 to give a better title to another, than that which he possesses himself. 

 The man who has the rank or degree of " esquire," does not possess the 

 qualification : but he qualifies his son, who has not the rank or degree ! 

 A colonel in the army, nay a general officer, by rank, is not qualified : 

 the son of a captain, by rank, must have the qualification ! In fact, the 

 right altogether seems to exist very oddly, and to hang by a sort of 

 sympathy (like Mahomet's tomb hanging between heaven and earth) 

 generally between two persons. For though the son of the esquire most 

 undutifully takes the title, while the father has it not ; yet the father 

 has his revenge, for, when he dies though never crowned himself! 

 the reign of his usurping offspring ceases.t 



* For, as no extent of property makes a man an " esquire," or " person of higher 

 degree," so, the party having that degree as a captain in the army, or a doctor of physic 

 has it equally, and equally qualifies, and must qualify, his eldest son, although he should 

 never, while he lives, at any one moment, be the master of twenty pounds. The eldest 

 son of a barrister without business, living with his father in two garrets in the Temple, 

 has a qualification : the eldest son of a proprietor of five thousand acres, in Norfolk or 

 Suffolk, may be without it. 



f The qualification of the son of an esquire, in the greater number of cases, ceases with 

 the life of the father : as in the case where the father is an officer in the army, a barrister, 

 a sergeant at law, a doctor of the learned professions, or a magistrate : at the death of any 

 of these persons, the qualification of their eldest sons will cease. In the last case (that of 

 the magistrate) the son is qualified, or disqualified, as the father happens to be in, or out of, 



