120 The Game 



by having this inconvenience imposed upon the lovers" of music ? If a 

 candidate for the right of shooting game were compelled to pay a tax to 

 the government for his qualification ; or to hold, de facto, a specific quan- 

 tity of land, that he might contribute to support the property that he 

 destroyed; either of these arrangements might exhibit some shew of 

 reason or purpose : but what do we mean by a law, which insists that a 

 man shall purchase houses in Round-court, in the Strand, to acquire the 

 right of shooting hares in Buckingham or Bedfordshire ? The act seems 

 not like compliance with a requisition of law, but like a trick of witch- 

 craft or conjuration ! the conundrum of curing a man of a wound in 

 one country, by rubbing salve upon a sword in another ; " laying Obi," 

 as it were, for the landowners ; and affecting them by a transaction to 

 which they are no parties, and of which they are not even cognisant. 

 And this is directly the fact : for the party who sells the houses in 

 Round-court actually does $e//with them, the exact number whatever that 

 may be of partridges or pheasants that the purchaser can manage to 

 kill upon the estates of every landed proprietor in the country ; before 

 each individual owner has time to inform him that he is legally, as well 

 as morally, something very like a depredator ; and that proceedings will be 

 taken against him in that capacity, if he does avail himself of the imme- 

 diate opportunity to retreat ! 



Our limits compel us to pass over those iniquitous provisions of the 

 law, which, besides depriving the holders of an immense mass of wealth 

 of their fair and equal rights on the subject of killing game, expose them 

 to insult and obstruction in the course of their ordinary lives and avoca- 

 tions, in consequence of their " disqualification" to possess it. The 

 holders of all the funded property in the country may not kill game 

 under a penalty. They may not have game in their possession, or eat it 

 (unless by gifts) ; and the lords of any manors in which they live, have 

 authority to take it away from them. Their houses may be searched for 

 game or nets, suspected only to be concealed ; and this upon the warrant 

 of a single justice of the peace the servant of such justice being, per- 

 haps, the party " suspecting" and laying the information. If it appear 

 that a dog belonging to any of them has been seen to chase game (it is 

 not necessary that the game should have been taken or killed) that dog 

 may be seized by the lord of the manor, and destroyed. A vast number 

 of other penalties follow, which, in any other situation than in rural districts 

 in towns, for instance, where a disposition to public spirit exists it would 

 be impossible to enforce for a twelvemonth, and which any man probably 

 would attempt to enforce even in a single instance at some hazard of 

 his life :* but we pass over the whole tissue of extravagance and 



* It would be curious to imagine the result of an attempt to execute the provisions of the 

 statute of Charles or Anne, upon a tradesman at Charing Cross ; whose spaniel, for 

 instance, had coursed or killed a stray hare on a walk with his master to Bayswater or Ken- 

 sington Gravel Pits ; and thereby incurred the penalty of death, by the hand of the game- 

 keeper, searching (under the warrant of a justice of the peace) in the name of the lord 

 of the manor. The first case of such a kind would probably be got through securely owing 

 to the astonishment into which such a proceeding would throw the attacked party : and 

 the confidence he would feel of prompt satisfaction for the wrong, at the hands of Mr. Conant, 

 or Sir Richard Birnie. On the second occasion when it was ascertained that the course was 

 legal, and that there was no redress for it, the result would probably be not so satisfac- 

 tory. The baker, or grocer, threatened, as the case might be, would, incontinently, kick 

 the visiting gamekeeper out of his doors, or throw him out at the window. The mob, 



