114 The Game Laws. [FEB. 



general rule. The first effect, as it seems to us, of any law that gave 

 an unlimited liberty to shoot, would be the waste and extermination of 

 nine-tenths of the game in the country ; and the crusade would only 

 cease, when (between the extent of the havock, and the refusal of the 

 landowners to go on producing), the quantity left became so small (and 

 that little so widely scattered), as not to repay the trouble of pursuing. 



But we have no need of Game Statutes to secure us from a state of 

 things like this : statutes, equitably and reasonably constructed (upon 

 this, as upon other subjects), might, and no doubt would, be conve- 

 nient : but the common law of the country following only the dictates 

 of common reason protects game from pillage and spoliation, just as 

 it protects every other description of property. Game is not found in the 

 public highways, nor upon the tops of the houses: if it is to be shot or 

 hunted down, it must be shot or hunted upon some man's land : and, 

 upon that land, the law of the country the natural and reasonable law 

 of trespass prohibits the public from coming. To talk of a " natural" 

 or abstract " right" to shoot or possess " game," or any other kind of 

 wealth is, practically, nonsense. Society is made up out of the aban- 

 donment of such natural rights. The community can have no more just 

 (as it has no more available) right, to the partridges which are fed by 

 the corn-fields of a proprietor of land, than to the horses, or sheep, or 

 oxen, that are fattened in his meadows. No doubt, every man has a 

 " natural right" to kill game ; and he has also a " natural right" to drink 

 claret : but he has no more right to kill game on his neighbour's pre- 

 serve, than he has to take claret out of the cellars of the London Tavern. 

 No part of our policy goes to question the absolute right of the owner 

 of land to the game that may be found upon that land : on the contrary, 

 the denial of that right (strange as it may appear !) constitutes the case 

 of many of the landowners themselves and of our opponents. 



The changes desired by those writers, who have been the advocates 

 of a fair and reasonable adjustment of the question of the Game Laws, 

 may be stated thus : They have desired to see game declared private 

 property ; and its property distinctly vested in the owner of the soil : 

 to get rid of the absurd and offensive distinction of " qualification," as 

 it exists either by birth or by estate: and to allow the game proprietor the 

 same control over that particular produce of his land (whether for pur- 

 poses of use, or of alienation), which he possesses over property of every 

 other character. These two last dispositions arise so self-evidently, and 

 indeed so unavoidably, out of the first, that the whole, perhaps, for the 

 purposes of argument, may be treated as one proposition. 



The fair and equitable right, then, of the landowner to the game pro- 

 duced upon his ground, seems a point so clear, that we think we may dis- 

 miss it. The land breeds the game ; feeds it ; without the shelter and 

 food of the land (and often without the direct purchase and outlay of 

 the proprietor), the game would not be in existence. We take it there 

 can scarcely be two opinions as to that which ought, in justice, to be the 

 investment of the property of game ; and we shall at once, therefore, 

 proceed to that which is its actual distribution, under that part of the 

 Game Law called the Law of " Qualification." 



By the statute, the 22d of Charles II., cap. 25; extended and 

 made perpetual by the 5th and 9th of Anne, caps. 14 and 25 ; it is 

 enacted, " That every person not having lands or tenements, to the 

 amount of 100/. a year ; or leases for ninety-nine years, of the value of 



