The Slaughter of Big Game, &c. 35 



politicians, who gave expression both in speeches and in letters 

 to the newspapers to invectives of which the following may be cited 

 as specimens : " What do we want with titled asses .... who 

 parade upon the streets dressed in the most fantastic style, with their 

 waistcoats over their overcoats, and their shirts over their waist- 

 coats who take more money out of the country than 



they brought in," and, alluding to one particular sportsman who 

 had dared to criticise the provincial game laws, " who might 

 be seen driving many a hard bargain with the Indians with all 

 the avidity of a Shoreditch Jew," or in another place, referring 

 to the same person, " was a trader who tried to pass as a sport a 

 regular Shoreditch Jew." Mr. Joseph Hunter, M.P.P. (Member of 

 the Provincial Parliament), the gentleman who expressed these 

 prettily phrased personalities, could hardly be expected to know 

 very much about the sentiments of English sportsmen as a class, 

 but at the same time it seems a pity that such bombastic rhetoric 

 should add insult to the injury done by this fatuous blindness to 

 his country's true interests. 



How ineffectively the British Columbia game-laws are framed, 

 and how efficiently they are carried out, the following instance 

 taken from late numbers of the Victoria Times (July 21 and 

 August 21, 1899) will illustrate. According to the evidence pro- 

 duced before the city magistrate, a more than usually vigilant law 

 officer attempted to seize a shipment of some twenty-one thousand 

 pickled and raw skins of black-tail deer, which a Victoria firm of 

 hide merchants were about to export to San Francisco. Section 4 of 

 the statute under which this firm was prosecuted, runs as follows : 



No person shall at any time purchase or have in possession with 

 intent to export, or cause to be exported or carried out of the limits of this 

 province, or shall at any time or in any manner export, or cause to be 

 exported or carried out of the limits of this province, any or any portion of 

 the animals or birds mentioned in this Act, in their raw state : and this 

 provision shall apply to railway, steamship, and express companies. 



To put the result as briefly as possible, the judge dismissed the 

 case, because, according to a fair construction of the above quoted 



D 2 



