130 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



at one discharge, and no hand and no voice was 

 raised to interfere with the hideous sport. Not 

 because it was not shocking to the spectators, 

 but because it was "Sport." 



Doubtless it will be said that this wholesale 

 wanton destruction of bird life, however painful 

 it may be to lovers of nature, however repre- 

 hensible from a moral point of view, is sanctioned 

 by law, and cannot therefore be prevented. This 

 is not quite so. We see that the Wild Birds Pro- 

 tection Act is continually being broken with im- 

 punity, and where public opinion is unfavourable 

 to it the guardians of the law themselves, the 

 police and the magistrates, are found encourag- 

 ing the people to break the law. Again, we find 

 that where commons are enclosed, and the law 

 says nothing, the people are accustomed to as- 

 semble together unlawfully to tear the fences 

 down, and are not punished. For, after all, if 

 laws do not express or square with public will or 

 opinion, they have little force; and if, in any 

 locality, the people thought proper to do so — 

 if they were not restrained by that dull, tame spirit 

 I have spoken of — they would, lawfully or un- 

 lawfully, protect their sea-fowl from the cockney 



