Later Agrarian Legislation. 46? 



In 1814 the Government very wisely repealed the Statute of 

 Labourers, thereby in the interests of the community anni- 

 hilating another portion of the landlord's magisterial powers. 

 But surely for the sake of those same interests it might have 

 retained the clause ^ compelling the farmer's servants to work 

 in harvest, since a strike at that important crisis of husbandry 

 is to be deprecated on grounds of public utility. If ever the 

 time-honoured culinary principle that what is sauce for goose 

 is sauce for gander, can be applied to other circumstances, 

 here verily must be an instance. If capital has its obli- 

 gations to the community, certainly labour has also, and must 

 therefore be quite as subject to State interference as other 

 sources of National riches. 



Let us conclude this chapter with a short historical sketch 

 of the Game Laws, as illustrating the two opposite sides of 

 this problem of State policy ; the one where the motive for 

 interference appears to have been class favouritism, and the 

 other where it was clearly that of menaced public interests. 



The history of our game legislation may be divided into 

 three periods, the first regulated by the Forest Laws and 

 confining the rights of spoiting to the king and his 

 favourites ; the second during which the Game Laws replaced 

 those of the forest, thereby admitting the owner of the soil to 

 the pleasures of the chase on his own estate ; and the third 

 ushered in by the Game Act of 1 & 2 Will. IV. c. 32,*^ whereby 

 any one through purchase of a certificate becomes entitled to 

 sport subject to the law of trespass. 



All early legislation on this subject of course presupposes 

 property in game, and all alterations in it portend a change of 

 national opinion either as to what animals are property, or as 

 to whose property they should be. In the old Anglo-Saxon 

 times, owners of temporary grants on the waste, after that, by 

 their lord's help, they had converted it into Uenland^ expected 

 to be able to support themselves on it " by hunting, fowling 

 and fishing," imtil it was converted as bocland into " their 



» 5 Eliz. c. 4, s. 22. 



2 Compare also 24 Geo. III. sess. 2, c. 42; 25 Geo. III. c. 50; 52 Geo. 

 III. c. 93 ; 54 Geo. III. c. 141. 



