122 The Game Laws. [FEB. 



should be a single example of a man of large estate a peer of the realm, 

 perhaps or at least a magistrate himself a steady advocate for prohi- 

 biting the sale of game, selling his own game privately or resorting to 

 subterfuge, and bartering it doing this by himself, or allowing his 

 relatives and dependents to live or profit by doing it cheating not only 

 the public, for whom by his place he undertakes to watch, but the very 

 companions who are associated with him in their common juggle ; that 

 there should be one such example as this, could scarcely be credited, if 

 respectable individuals had not sworn to the fact before the Parliamen- 

 tary Committee ; and a nobleman of high rank, himself of unquestioned 

 character (Lord Suffield), openly declared his entire belief of it.* 



But it is only a portion of the general demand for game that can be 

 supplied by this last channel ; and the remainder has to rely upon a regular 

 notice a kind of oral advertisement published through the mouths of 

 higglers, carriers, van-drivers, stage and mail coach " guards," and 

 coachmen, and other persons daily traversing the country that there 

 are pheasants in the fields of A, which may easily be stolen, and which, 

 when stolen, B is desirous to buy. This invitation, coming upon 

 numbers of villagers, pressed sufficiently by need, and often in a state 

 of absolute pauperism, produces that continued system of poaching 

 which fills our gaols with prisoners ; and which an odd error sometimes 

 confounds with an effect of " the passion of the population of England 

 for what are called field sports." 



Because it is as great a mistake to say that a poacher steals game, out 

 of a love of the " sport," or amusement that he finds in taking it, as it is 

 to say, on the other hand, that he is a fated or determined thief, who, 

 if he did not steal game, would steal something else would steal, for 

 instance, sheep or poultry. The love of the poacher for sport, never by 

 any accident directs him to any but the most valuable game : he never 

 looks for a partridge where he can find a pheasant, or for a rabbit, where 

 he can find a hare : and a fox he never troubles himself about at all. 

 On the other hand, the assumption of his predestination or predis- 

 position to thieve, is a still more mischievous delusion. The tempta- 

 tion which leads a man to steal is made up of several ingredients. His 

 want is probably the first : the second is the degree of facility with which 

 he can obtain the object to be stolen : the third, the facility with which 

 he can dispose of it. Now both these last conveniences the law touching 

 game takes care very amply to provide the poacher with. If a labourer 

 conceives the thought of stealing poultry, he must break open doors, 

 and probably hazard being seized by dogs or inmates, in order to obtain 

 it. When he has it he 'must sell it at a thief's price : for it is known 

 that it cannot be his own ; and no reputable person will purchase fowls 



* Several dealers in game (respectable poulterers) stated to the Committee (as a matter, 

 perfectly well known in their trade), that noblemen and gentlemen were in the habit of 

 bartering, and otherwise disposing of their game to the fishmongers and poulterers with 

 whom they dealt ; and Lord Suffield, in his very liberal and able pamphlet upon the Game 

 Laws, speaks of several instances (not giving the names of the parties) in which, from facts 

 within his own knowledge, he has no doubt of the existence of the practice. His lordship 

 would not feel himself called upon to volunteer a disagreeable office ; but it certainly would 

 be perfectly justifiable to publish the name of any proprietor, who could be shewn to have 

 committed this sort of offence, and who was an opponent of a change in the system of the 

 Game Laws. 



