1828.] The Game Lam. 119 



believe (who desires to have the article), in the whole country ! Men, 

 perfectly scrupulous upon all other subjects, make no difficulty of uttering 

 a falsehood on any question connected with the Game Laws. The sons 

 of considerable landowners shoot, on the one hand, without any qualifi- 

 cation : and inform against any person (less able to bear litigation than 

 their father), whom they find taking the same liberty, on the other. 

 At Oxford and Cambridge, one qualification (and often one certificate) 

 passing day after day from hand to hand, serves perhaps half a college: 

 and the young men, who commit this fraud without the slightest com- 

 punction, would feel disgraced for ever by having lied or equivocated 

 upon any other subject. In fact, the universal feeling is, that the case 

 is one in which evasion is justifiable : all people do it, and in that which 

 all do, there ceases to be discredit. Every child can see that the law is a 

 mere farrago of arrogance, and contradiction, and impracticable absur- 

 dity. It is known published that many of those who are most for- 

 ward to impose it upon their neighbours, and even fellows, secretly violate 

 every article of it themselves. The whole country votes it an insult. 

 The only struggle is, who shall violate it to most purpose. And when a 

 chance conviction does take place, the cry is not that the party con- 

 cerned has committed any act of impropriety ; but that the statute is a 

 very disgraceful one, under which he is to be punished : and that a horse- 

 whipping might, with very great advantage, be communicated to the 

 informer ! 



It is no answer to all this, to tell us that these complaints of the Game 

 Laws are unfounded ; for that " any man may have a qualification to 

 shoot there is no mystery in the process who has money to purchase 

 it" The same argument would apply, with equal truth, to almost any 

 possible arrangement of injustice and extortion. If the streets of London 

 were kept without foot-pavement, we might be told, that " every man 

 might avoid the mud," by " getting into a hackney-coach." And, in 

 the same way, when he reached his journey's end, he might put an end 

 to any fear of overcharge on the part of the driver, by simply paying 

 him three times the amount of fare that was his due. The question is 

 not whether a qualification to shoot game can be bought by the man 

 who has money ? but, whether it is necessary, or advantageous, that he 

 should be compelled to pay the price that is demanded for it ? And even 

 this is consenting to waive the anterior question why one man should 

 obtain that privilege by an expensive purchase, which another, no way 

 more visibly entitled or deserving than himself, receives as a matter of 

 grace ? 



It is injustice and oppression and even more than these to impose 

 any tax upon individuals, which does not tend to the advantage of the state; 

 or, at least, to the obvious protection and security of some considerable 

 (and deserving) class or interest in the state. But the law that fixes the man- 

 ner of " qualification by purchase" compels a man to make an investment, 

 perhaps very inconvenient to himself; and by which neither the general 

 community, nor any class of claimants in it, seem to be in the remotest 

 degree benefited ! The purchase to be made by a strange eccentricity 

 of arrangement has no earthly perceptible connexion with the right or 

 power which the purchaser desires to buy ! What would be the reason- 

 ableness of enacting, that no man should go to hear the Italian opera, 

 who did not buy two tons of lavender-water, or become the holder of 

 twenty-five cases of Havannah cigars ? What would the public gain 



