47<5 History of the English Landed Interest. 



to make the preservation of game possible and profitable,"^ the 

 increasing animus in the public mind on the subject is of 

 itself sufficient to deter many from fully exercising their 

 rights. 



Moreover, the Game Act, by establishing a legal right for 

 anybody to kill game, subject only to the law of trespass, 

 opened the door for further legislation. A considerable sec- 

 tion of the public began to murmur at a code which severely 

 punishes as a criminal offence what they consider should be a 

 civil one only. People profess their sense of equity to be out- 

 raged whenevex' a farmer after killing game on his tenancy 

 contrary to the terms of his agreement, is indicted in the 

 courts as a criminal for that which, so they assert, is a mere 

 breach of contract.^ We strongly suspect that the secret 

 of their hostility is a desire to still further break up the 

 monopoly which excludes them from participating in the 

 pleasures of this sport. A belief therefore, of which this 

 wish is the father, and King William's Act the mother, 

 has become engrained in their understanding that all game 

 is ferm naturce. But when a landed proprietor goes to 

 considerable expense to confine, breed, rear, and preserve 

 naturally wild animals, it would be decidedly unjust to refuse 

 him rights of property over them. If this were done, it is at 

 least doubtful whether a Lancashire collier or a Welsh quarry- 

 man would ever afterwards be capable of drawing the fine 

 distinction necessary between the meum and tuuni of, say, a 

 Dorking cock and a cock pheasant. In fact if the ancient 

 barriers created by our Common Law between animals subject 

 to proprietary rights and those not so subject, are to be 

 broken down, where can they be re-erected ? 



Rights of property in game received another rude shock 

 when by 23 & 24 Vict. c. 90 even game proprietors were 



* Agrarian Tenures^ p. 8. G. Shaw Lefevre, 1893. 



'■* Though the landowner in Scotland is, in the absence of any agree- 

 ment to the contrary, the legal representative of game rights, the occu- 

 pier in England is under similar circumstances recognised as such in our 

 statute book. Hence the necessity for an English landlord to reserve his 

 rights of sporting in all agreements of tenancy. 



