520 Letter on Affairs in general. [MAY, 



tors, who would have an interest in preventing it ; and though it would not 

 be extinguished immediately, would receive such a wound, from the want 

 of encouragement which would follow the legalization of the sale, as would 

 render it infinitely less lucrative, and therefore infinitely less tempting to 

 the misguided peasantry, who now engage in it. I say nothing of the moral 

 feeling, which would be generated against it, for 1 dislike canting about 

 that of which we know nothing till we see its fruits. 



I have now gone as briefly as I could, through the leading enactments 

 of this bill ; and you will see, that, though I approve of the principle on 

 which it proceeds, I disapprove of most of its details. It is to be accom- 

 panied by another bill, without which it would be utterly unavailing as a 

 remedial measure, repealing the 57th Geo. III. ch. 90. an act, which 

 has filled the land with more bloodshed, and its prisons with more felons 

 and murderers, than any other single act in the whole range of the Sta- 

 tute Book. As the manner in which that bill was smuggled through par- 

 liament, very clearly elucidates the spirit, in which country gentlemen 

 legislate on partridges and peasants, you will perhaps not consider it a 

 waste of time to listen to a short history of it. In the session of J817, 

 Mr. G. Banks sneaked a bill into the House of Commons, extending the 

 time of night to two hours beyond its natural duration at any period of the 

 year, and authorizing magistrates at Quarter Sessions to convict, by a 

 summary process, persons found by night in enclosed places with guns or 

 other implements with intent to kill game, and to subject them at the 

 discretion of the said magistrates, to transportation for seven years, or to 

 any minor punishment. This bill- which for severity has no parallel, 

 except it be the act of Elizabeth, which doomed to the gallows such sol- 

 diers and sailors as were found bogging in the streets without a pass from 

 their officers was introduced, like ; t.* j rouecessor, as an amendment on the 

 vagrant act, and had passed as such, without remark, through all its stages, 

 to the third reading, before Sir S. Romilly discovered it to be an impudent 

 attempt to aggravate the existing penalties of the Game Laws. That 

 great man immediately opposed it with the united powers of argument and 

 eloquence, but was not able to wrest from the country gentlemen any 

 tiling more than this alteration in it, namely, that the conviction should 

 not be by summary process before the magistrates, but by a trial by jury, 

 either at the Assizes or the Sessions. Since the passing of that law, a war 

 of posts has been maintained in every plantation ; and the situation of 

 gamekeeper and lord of the manor has become a situation of danger, without 

 being converted into a situation of honour. Nor is it at all wonderful, 

 that such should have been its results. The man, who would surrender 

 quietly, if a few months imprisonment was all he had to suffer, is driven 

 to attempt a desperate resistance, when he recollects, that his capture may 

 lead to a long banishment in a distant country from all his friends and 

 family connections. The severity of the law has also destroyed its effi- 

 cacy. Notwithstanding all Mr. Bankes's twaddling about (*) "a poacher 

 being a thief according to the law of nature," jurors are accustomed to 

 take the same view of poaching that the law does, and to consider it as a 

 trespass, not as a theft. It appears inconsistent with their feelings of 

 justice, that so heavy a punishment should fall upon so insignificant a 

 crime ; and the consequence is, that, until the last Assizes at Warwick, 

 they always refused to convict upon this statute, from a fear of the conse- 



* Vide the " Re-considerations.* 



