1827.] Letter on Affairs in general. 517 



restriction is consistent with civil liberty, that does not conduce in a greater 

 degree, than the absence of it, to the public welfare. Now, why a man 

 with twenty acres is to be restrained from killing that game himself, which 

 no other man can legally kill without his permission, is not quite so clear 

 as the " way to parish church." Does his killing it hurt, or his being pre- 

 vented from killing it benefit, his fellow subjects ? If he neither hurt them 

 in the first case, nor benefit them in the latter, the restraint laid upon his 

 will is wanton and causeless ; and every such restraint is declared by 

 Blackstone a degree of tyranny. It is said, however, that this alteration 

 of the law is a boon given to the small at the expense of the large proprie- 

 tor, inasmuch as it enables him to seduce to, and kill in, his paltry plot of 

 ground the game bred in the costly plantation:- of his opulent neighbour. 

 Lord Suffield, who has been a game-preserver and a sportsman, ever since 

 he attained the age of manhood, affirms, upon his own experience, that if 

 game-keepers know and perform their duties, this seduction is impossible, 

 game being easily retained in any covert, where there is an adequate 

 supply of food ; but, even if this were not the case, why is not the small 

 owner to be permitted to go to the expense for the thing cannot be done 

 without expense of attracting to his portion of land those wild animals 

 which feed at large upon the bounties of nature, and are no man's property,* 

 till they are taken and caught ? The perdricide squire will generally pos- 

 sess much greater means of attracting game than his less-landed neighbour, 

 and if he does not employ them he has no right to find fault with any land- 

 holder in his vicinity, be he great or small, who is more active than himself 

 in the improvement of his property. The great difficulty, however, of the 

 Game Laws arises in the consideration of the question, how you are to 

 punish offences against them, after you have destroyed qualifications, and 

 made game the property of the owner of the soil. You cannot at present 

 place game under the same protection as poultry, by making the taking of 

 it by an unauthorized person a felony, because it is quite clear, that, by such 

 an enactment, you would soon convert into felons one half of the existing 

 generation of gentlemen in England. How, then, are you to deal with 

 trespassers, supposing that you convict them of being trespassers in search 

 of game? The remedy by action is expensive, uncertain, and dilatory. 

 " Therefore let the perdricide justice fine the trespasser," cries Lord Wharn- 

 cliffe." " Aye,'' replies Lord Ellenborough, " fine him by ail means for 

 the trespass, and commit him to prison for ten days for each head of game 

 that shall be found in his possession.'' Now, though I cannot substitute a 

 better, I like not either of these proposals. That of Lord Ellenborough, 

 which would introduce one desirable novelty into the Game Laws, by in- 

 flicting the same penalty both on the patrician and the plebeian violator of 

 them, has been rejected, as it deserved to be, by their Lordships. Lord 

 Wharncliffe's proposal has been approved, but is, nevertheless, highly ob- 

 jectionable, in my mind, because it gives in the first instance, to a single 

 justice, who in all probability will be a game preserver, and subsequently, 

 in case of appeal to a board of justices, of which the majority is certain to 

 consist of game preservers* the right to fine, and consequently to imprison, 

 their countrymen without the intervention of a jury ; and because, after all 



" The language of the civil law is very clear ou this point " Ferae bestiae et volucres, 

 et pisces, et omnia animalia, quse mari, ccelo, et terra nascuntur, simul atque ab alio 

 capta fuerint, jure gentium statim illias esse incipiunt. Quod enim ante nullius est, id 

 naturali rat ione occupanti conceditur, nee interest fera bestiaset volucres utrum in suo 

 fuudo quiscapiat aut alieno," Justinian's Institutes, lib. ii, tit, s. 12. 



