1828.] The Game Laws. 127 



if not personally advantageous, to the higher landowners, by whom they 

 are supported. On the contrary, they are exposed by them scarcely 

 more to losses than to constant dissension and annoyance. The law of 

 " descent" " qualifies" ten thousand people, whom they wish (and 

 reasonably) to keep out ; and they themselves are unable to qualify their 

 families, but by an expensive, and often inconvenient process. Your 

 "qualified" man by descent who never had a foot of land, nor ever looks 

 to have is the great scarecrow for which the gamekeeper is constantly 

 on the watch. Such a man sneaks round the preserve of a proprietor, as 

 cautiously as a poacher (according to law) would do : and with as much 

 fear of being observed. He gets in, when the owner and his keepers 

 are abroad; slaughters away every thing right and left flying or 

 sitting; and moves off at the first glimpse of a servant approaching, that 

 he may not be " warned off," and so have an opportunity of committing 

 his paltry depredation again. The true game proprietor is hardly put 

 to more expense or inconvenience in keeping off the parish labourer, 

 who turns poacher for a livelihood, than in watching the " qualified" 

 depredator, who comes with his legal right, and shoots his game for the 

 mere pecuniary value of it. 



The same sort of teasing inconveniences, and more than teasing, dan- 

 gerous inconveniences, pervade every department of the system. Two- 

 thirds of the personal quarrels : three-fourths of the jealousies and heart- 

 burnings : four-fifths of the prosecutions which take place in the agri- 

 cultural districts, have their origin in the " Game Laws." The watching 

 an unqualified man who only stirs with a gun in his hand, lest he 

 should shoot a partridge under cover of looking for a snipe ; the get- 

 ting a man just qualified " warned off" by neighbouring farmers a bit 

 of " jobbing" that the suffering party takes care at proper time to recol- 

 lect ; the quarrels about the right of " following game ;" the almost 

 nightly waste of life in the battles between keepers and poachers : and, 

 to conclude, the trials of offenders at sessions and assizes the w r hole 

 charge of which is borne by the county : all these are but a type of the 

 evils which the Game Laws fasten upon the country ; and which the 

 legislature would seem to court, and to encourage, from the obstinacy 

 with which their absurdities are maintained. 



A simple law, which should repeal every statute in existence without 

 a single exception touching the property of game ; and vest the right 

 to that property in the owner of the soil, with the same rights and 

 powers which attach to every other description of possession, would be 

 one of the most valuable boons that the present administration could 

 confer upon England. The country is deeply indebted to Mr. Peel, 

 for the candour and manly firmness, with which, while in office,* he 

 pressed that reform upon Parliament, even in opposition to many of his 

 personal friends and supporters ; and we trust that, although out of office, 

 he will not relax, and that the present session of Parliament will not be 

 allowed to pass over, without some earnest and determined effort at 

 .amendment. We have suggested the vesting the property of game in 

 the owner (in preference to giving it to the occupier) of the land ; 

 because we desire to see no step taken which should trench upon any 



* It seems more than probable, that, before this paper is published, Mr. Peel will be in 

 office again. Ed. 



