OV TRB INFLUENCE OF FEUDALISM. 43 



pence of the people's liberties and happiness, and which were both 

 feared and hated by our ancestors, (to use the words of Blackstone) 

 " for ihe most horrid tyrannies and oppvessions exercised under 

 colour thereof, for the sake of preserving the beasts of the chase, to 

 kill any of which within the limits of the forest was as penal as the death 

 of a man, and that these evils were of the most fearful magnitude 

 may be gathered from the fact that the Conqueror had no less than 

 sixty eight forests, thirteen chases and seventy eight parks in England 

 for the royal sport." I wish not to be understood as intimating that 

 the present game laws should be reviewed in connection with their 

 detestable originals, for I kn;)w well that the preservation of private 

 property and the discouragement of idleness, vagrancy, and noc- 

 turnal crime have been the declared statutory reasons for their enact- 

 ment ; and I mention them merely as another memento of the exist- 

 ence of the feudal system in this country-. Similar instances might 

 be quoted, as the rights oifree warren and free-fishery y which yet 

 remain and trace their commencement to the royal grants prior to 

 Magna Charta. 



But although we do not expect to discover in Boroughs such 

 evidences of aristocratic connection as those before stated, we may 

 still distinctly find strong maiks of their feudal relation to the 

 K Sovereign. Most of the Boroughs were parts of the royal demesnes 

 and in these the sovereign power was unsparingly exercised in the 

 raising of money by toUage and impositions. Our modern tolls on 

 goods coming into and sold in market were originally raised and levied 

 by the Crown, which exercised similar rights in compellhig payment 

 of tolls for the crossinj? of ferries and bridges ; these still remain, 

 and are now principally the property of the town, or of private in- 

 dividuals to whom they were either farmed, or granted by charter, or 

 bestowed by favour, and the great national impost of the Customs 

 was originally a tax paid to the monarch by his towns, for the 

 privilege of importation and commerce, and not merely as a prohibit- 

 ory duty for the protection of particular national interests. No 

 town exhibits stronger evidences of tho truth of these statements 

 than our own, and the reference to its charters and usages will shew 

 clearly the original sjurce of them to be derivable from the power 

 of feudal sovereigns. 



