THE 



MONTHLY MAGAZINE. 



VOL. V.] FEBRUARY, 1828. [No. 26. 



THE GAME LAWS. 



THERE is a proverb traceable in the idiom of most ancient and modern 

 nations, that " No persons are so blind as those that wont see !" This 

 inference is quite true ; and the light must be very strong which pene- 

 trates the darkness of such people. But these strong lights do occur now 

 and then ; and one of them (it gives us great pleasure to see) is just 

 glimmering upon the obscurity, of the opponents of a reform in the sys- 

 tem of the Game Laws ! 



It has never been any part of our opinion, nor, we believe, of the 

 policy of any advocate of a moderate and practicable reform in the system 

 of the Game Laws, that the right to kill game, without exception or 

 restriction, should be thrown open to the whole community. Whatever 

 may be the effect in the less thickly peopled countries of the Continent, 

 to pass such a law here, would be to decree the extinction of game pretty 

 nearly altogether. We have no mild and settled climate, in England, 

 favourable in all seasons to the production and preservation of feathered 

 game ; no vast wastes, upon which it can always find sufficient subsist- 

 ence without robbing any body ; nor half-cultivated tracts, over which 

 it may be followed without injury to the proprietor. In England, be- 

 tween our great manufacturing towns and our barren mining districts 

 our eternal parks and mansions, and turnpike roads, and navigable 

 canals the game is almost as much straitened and cooped, for compass, 

 as we are ourselves. Every acre of ground, capable of subsisting any 

 thing, is applied to some profitable account, and is the property of some- 

 body. All that is taken from the soil by the birds, is so much lost to the 

 harvest of the farmer ; and landowners would no more consent to feed 

 partridges in their fields, than they would raise apple and pear-trees in 

 their gardens, if the produce belonged at large to the community. We 

 are not aware that there is any commodity capable of being taken pos- 

 session of (and worth taking possession of) that exists, or has recently 

 existed, as public property in England ; and we perceive no peculiarity 

 about hares or pheasants, which should make them an exception to the 



M.M. New 6>H<*.~ Voi<. V. No. 26. Q 



