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THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



means. But, to our astonishment, we find this disciple 

 ot Progress, and champion of the great principle that 

 men should go about their business as unfettered as 

 possible, actually retrograding ! Rabbits are, to rank 

 as game, again. No tenant shall under any circum- 

 stances destroy them without a certificate ; and this in 

 the face of a comparatively recent proviso that he should 

 have a similar privilege for both hares and rabbits. The 

 career of the present Chancellor of the Exchequer does 

 not go to show that he had ever any very great respect 

 for the interests of agriculture; but the coolness with 

 which he now pushes the farmer aside, solely for a possi- 

 bly paltry increase of revenue, is both a wrong und i:n 

 insult. And what a commentary, too, on the agitation 

 originated some years since by what is termed " the 

 Manchester school " over the Game Laws, when we 

 find their pet statesman doing more to perpetuate, or 

 rather to revive the worst evils of the system, than any- 

 thing that has been attempted in the memory of man. 

 I do not at this writing believe that such a proposition 

 can be acceded to ; but if it is, we may well look round 

 us, and ask where are " the farmers' friends" ? How- 

 ever, game or vermin as they may be classified, the 

 rabbits naturally bring me on to their sworn friend 

 and protector the game-keeper. One loathes the very 

 name of such an office. You must all know the 

 authority he exercises — a power so much above his pro- 

 per position in life ; and that, as a rule, he proportion- 

 ately abuses. To him the commonest act of husbandry 

 is one of suspicion and distrust. He unites the invinci- 

 ble curiosity of our English Paul Pry with the malicious 

 intent of a spy for the Inquisition. The farmer and his 

 men are continually under his supervision. There is 

 nothing they can do but it is his " duty" to overlook 

 them. He stands by the mowers to see they do no harm 

 to his nests. He struts into the reaping field to 

 make sure they don't hurt his birds- The boy with his 

 scare-crow, the shepherd with his dog, and the little 

 lass with her kitten, are all alike the objects of his hatred 

 and his tyranny. He has been known to wrench a gun 

 from the hand of a farmer's son for shooting at a rat 1 

 He has told the farmer himself he should prefer his not 

 firing at the birds on the corn, as it was " such a trouble 

 to be always coming to see what he was after !" He has 

 informed against a tenant, whom of course he was watch- 

 ing, when his victim got off and picked up a hare which 

 his horse killed in her form ; and a bench of magistrates 

 at Newark positively followed this up with a conviction ! 

 To the disgust, however, of these Solons, the Commis- 

 sioners of Taxes of course reversed the decision. He 

 lays traps for the labourers, as has been proved over and 

 over again ; and rejoices, like another Jonathan Wild, 

 or some other such a scoundrel, only in the downfall of 

 his fellow-men. He is the very essence of evildoing. He 

 whispers characters away in the ear of his employer ; he 

 swears them away more openly in Court. He is inces- 

 santly making ill-blood between man and man, and he 

 is the one great blot on our fair English landscape. I 

 have the experience of an old keeper himself to say 

 that such men are rarely to be believed or trusted ; and 

 they are the greatest enemies to true sport that I know 

 of. The rabbits are the keeper's perquisites ; that is to 

 say, the vermin which do the farmer the greatest injury 

 are the animals above all others that the keeper has a 

 direct interest in maintaining a stock of. The vermin 

 which the law decl.ires the tenant has a right to destroy 

 as vermin, the landlord transfers as a right to his servant. 

 There is, I am happy to say, a growing feeling against 

 the fashion of perquisites, or of paying a servant by any 

 other means than by that of his fair wages. If a gen tleman 

 pays his servant fair wages the man has no claim to per- 

 quisites ; and if the employer does not give him his due 

 hire, he can certainly with but little justice look to the 



farmer to make it up to him. But we hear still of head 

 keepers clearing their two or three hundreds a year by 

 the rabbits ; so much gain to them being, us a rule, so 

 much loss to the tenants. I have termed the keeper an 

 enemy to true sport — to the finest field-sport this or any 

 other country can boast of. How often have I seen 

 pheasants darken the air, and hares ;.nd rabbits cross 

 the steady hound at every step, as we drew the large- 

 holding covers, one after another, without a challenge, or 

 the sign of a fox ! How I have marked the master and 

 huntsman look significantly at each other when every bit 

 of it was drawn " blank," and heard the latter call his 

 hounds away from the swarms of vermin, with a certain 

 kind of contempt in the tone of his cheery voice : 

 "Come away, my lads! come away! we don't want 

 any of them, do we?" And there, too, was sure to 

 stand, at the other end of the cover, the jealous, lying, 

 murdering keeper, reiterating that he " Can't make it 

 out. There were three or four foxes here the day be- 

 fore yesterday ; my lord will be so sorry to hear they 

 didn't find ;" and so on. "Come away! come away 

 there 1" is the other's only comment, as he draws his 

 hounds by with a half- smile of pity that makes Mr. 

 Plush, case-hardened as he is, fairly wince again. There 

 is no greater self-deception, no finer piece of humbug, 

 than a game-preserver allowing his keeper to sell the 

 rabbits, and telling him, at the same time, not to de- 

 stroy the foxes. There will be, of course, some men 

 who do not exceed the proper duties of their offic?, nor 

 exercise to the full the monstrous powers invested in 

 them. It may, also, be urged that the employer is 

 chiefly to blame ; but, as Mr. Hamond tells us, " there 

 are too many men who are the slaves of their keepers," 

 and, as he adds, " the sooner they are emancipated the 

 belter." Game is well distinguished as of two great 

 orders — Fur and Feather. In this classification the 

 latter kind is thought to do by no means equal harm 

 with the fur. Indeed the famous partridge shooting of 

 Norfolk is said to be enjoyed at little or no cost to the 

 farmer. Pheasants, again, are half-domesticated, and 

 fed as regulai'ly as poultry. They crowd round like 

 Mrs. Bond's famous ducks at the chickabiddy cry of 

 " Come and be killed I" Still occasionally they eat a 

 vast deal of corn. No one who has seen them perched 

 on the shocks towards the end of harvest can suppose 

 their investigations at such a time and place are directed 

 altogether to the extermination of the wire-worm. And 

 I am assured that during the last season, on the pro- 

 perty of a noted game-preserving nobleman in Suff"olk, 

 towards the close of an autumn afternoon, three-hundred 

 pheasants were counted round a tenant's barley stack. 

 I will not say exactly what purpose they were there for. 

 It might, perhaps, have been a public meeting, called 

 by some old cock, to lake into consideration what effect 

 the Chancellor of th<; Exchequer's proposition for a 

 cheap certificate might have on the long-tailed interest ; 

 or, to devise some measures against the coming discus- 

 sion at the Farmers' Club. However, it is a pretty 

 general rule amongst us to wind up all such proceedings 

 with a dinner, and I much question whether this in- 

 fluential gathering separated without partaking of some 

 refreshment. The pheasants shall call the meeting, the 

 Marquis will give the land to hold it on ; and Mr. 

 Martyr shall stand the dinner. But these birds 

 do not confine themselves to corn. At a recent valua- 

 tion on the Western line, for damages done by game, a 

 shepherd declared that in the spring of last year he be- 

 lieved the pheasants ate as much of the swedes as his 

 flock of sheeji. Nevertheless, pheasants can be kept a 

 good deal on their own ground, if they are only well fed ; 

 and, perhaps, the most harmless plan with them, if people 

 must have a great bag, would be that adopted a short 

 time since by a noble lord. He was going to shoot an 



