}(}28.] The Game Laws. 121 



tyranny, in order to devote the short remaining space allotted to us, to 

 that most monstrous and intolerable of all the evils arising out of the 

 present insolent and oppressive system the calamitous account of rob- 

 bery and homicide which is, year after year, inflicted upon the country, 

 by that part of the law which prohibits the public sale of game. 



It would scarcely be within the capacity of belief to any educated 

 native of a foreign country, if the fact were stated to him, without abso- 

 lute evidence of its truth that there was a law in England, enacting 

 that a commodity of English produce, constantly in demand, and brought 

 to market as regularly as any other article of commerce, should be sup- 

 plied wholly and solely to the consumer by no other means than theft. 

 The first question of such an individual would be as a justification of 

 his incredulity " What object is such a law passed to attain ?" That 

 question is one, to which a well-informed man might be puzzled to 

 give an answer. 



We wish to legalize the sale of game to get rid of the absurd and 

 mischievous prohibition which makes men offenders against the law by 

 force, as if we had not sufficient of crime and misery to contend with 

 naturally not at all for the sake of the unqualified consumer who 

 does sufficiently well for his purposes already ; and not very much for 

 the sake of the producer the great landowner who, though he suffers 

 materially from the law, deserves little sympathy, since he is himself the 

 author of it ; but, in some degree, for the sake of the common sense and 

 reputation of the country, and still more for the sake of the lives and 

 liberties the moral feeling, and the personal safety of the lower classes 

 of its inhabitants ; all of which circumstances that law is compromising, 

 in a degree shameful to the constituted authorities which uphold it. 

 Our argument on this point will be short ; for the disgusting tendency 

 of this portion of the generally selfish and stupid law even by the most 

 brutally obtuse and self-willed abettors of the system is now admitted. 

 The supporters of " the right of search," and of " qualification by 

 descent," confess that the sale of game can be resisted no longer 



The effect of the law, as it stands at present, is this. There exists in 

 England in London, at the " watering places," and in the more wealthy 

 commercial and manufacturing towns as systematic a demand for game, 

 as for fish, poultry, or any other luxury of life. The whole of this 

 demand is abundantly supplied ; but the law insists that it be only sup- 

 plied through the violation of the law through the means of fraud or 

 of robbery. Every body buys game ; and every body knows that the 

 game which he buys has either been stolen from the landowner, or sold 

 to him, secretly, and contrary to law, by the landowner himself. The 

 occurrence of a single instance of this last offence conveys an extent of 

 baseness which it is sickening to imagine the existence of. That there 



attracted by the riot, would roll any constables, that proposed to assist, in the kennel. The 

 windows of the " lord of the manor's" house (in St. James's Square, or elsewhere) would be 

 broken from top to bottom. The Guards would be called out, and after the loss of a life 

 or so, the ringleaders of the riot would be secured. These last would be tried, and probably 

 acquitted. If they were found guilty, some very lenient sentence would be passed upon 

 them. But the law that authorised the killing tradesmen's dogs, in shops within the liberty 

 of Westminster though it were the law of Alfred, instead of that of Charles II would be 

 at an end for ever! The enforcement of this law, hov.-ever, in the agricultural counties, is 

 by no means uncommon. 



M.M. New Series. VoL.V. No. 26. R 



