1828.] The Game Laws. 125 



The least beneficial result, to the landowner, of a law which enabled 

 him to sell his game,, would be, that he would share the market with the 

 poacher, which the latter now holds entirely : but we believe that the 

 true result would be, that he would have the Lion's share of it ; and that 

 the poacher would be almost wholly driven out. It is true that the first 

 demand seems a startling one " Can any man sell an article, cheaper 

 than the man who steals it ?" But, practically, there are a great many 

 answers to this proposition : and we have one in direct words ; we say 

 " Yes : the man who has it, and uses it only to give away" At present, 

 the landowner's game, according to his own account, produces him 

 nothing. He rears it; feeds it; and eventually shoots it, as a matter 

 of diversion ; whatever he may get for it be it much or little is so much 

 ofprojit. The poacher, whom we treat as getting the game for nothing, 

 it must be recollected gives his time for it : gives the chance of his liberty 

 (perhaps of his life) for it ; and, after all, sells it for a mere pittance, 

 because there are along train of capitalists between him and the consumer, 

 the whole of whom the landowner would avoid. In the illegal trade, 

 the poacher who kills the game must be paid for his risk. The carrier 

 who takes it to town (in small parcels, and therefore expensively) must 

 be paid for his risk. The " salesman," who sells it in the wholesale 

 market, charges an extra commission, for he must be paid for his risk ;* 

 and the poulterer, who supplies it to the consumer, will be paid for his 

 risk. Must not any man be ignorant of the first principles of trade or 

 born a natural ass who can believe that a commerce loaded with alt 

 these charges, will stand against the trade of the lawful proprietor, who 

 has the game at first hand cheaper than the poacher can have it, and 

 sends it to market, as he sends sheep or hogs, unexposed to any such 

 intermediate expenses ? 



When we talk of the "sufficiency" of the price, which a landowner would 

 be able to obtain in the market for pheasants, which he breeds at 10s. 

 or 20,?. a head, it must be remembered that he breeds these birds 

 already without looking to get any thing for them. And it is forgot- 

 ten, too, how much of the cost of rearing game arises out of the 

 present expensive system of " watching," four-fifths of which the 

 destruction of the market for the plunder would render entirely unne- 

 cessary. A fresh instance of ill faith or imbecility appears in the long 

 talked of apprehension, that the throwing open the trade in game would 

 enable the small landowner to rob the great one. If the sale of game 

 were equalized this is the absurd argument and the right thrown 

 open to every man of shooting game upon his own lands, the proprietor 

 who had large preserves, might be plundered by any petty proprietor 

 in his neighbourhood. " The little proprietor, by strewing corn (we 

 are almost ashamed to discuss these absurdities, but they are not of our 

 own introduction) upon such of his fields as adjoined the preserves of 

 the great proprietor, might entice the pheasants that the latter had 

 reared into his own ground, where he may shoot and take possession of 

 them." 



Now if objections like this are worth notice, it is really surprising 

 that the legislature should not have been called upon between: the 



* Sec Report of the Parliamentary Committee. 



