Later Agrarian Legislation. 471 



placed on tlie same footing as other sportsmen, by having to 

 take out a licence before going out shooting. Certainly in 

 both these later Acts the Government would seem to have 

 exercised an interference with vested interests, not so much 

 for the sake of the community as a whole, but on behalf of 

 that small section of the capitalist class to which the heritage 

 of sporting rights had not till then extended. 



By interposing a State license between the proprietor and 

 his furred and feathered property, this statute abolished 

 another of the chief distinctions between animals that are 

 private property and those that are fercB naturce. In this sense 

 it is undoubtedly a further step towards converting an offence 

 which is nothing less than theft into a mere act of trespass. 

 It would seem indeed as if the legislature already regarded 

 game as wild ; for when a poacher is arrested with it in his 

 possession, unless it has been started and caught on the same 

 estate, it is held to have become his private property. The 

 poacher therefore naturally regards it in the same light, and 

 cannot be brought to recognise that he is in the eyes of every 

 one, save those of the Law, a thief. 



The objections to the present poaching code, are, that it is 

 too inquisitorial, and that the game-owner in his office of 

 magistrate is a biassed interpreter of its meaning. If all game 

 is ferce naturce the laws are too severe ; if, on the contrary, it is 

 private property, they are too lax. A large majority of the 

 public would therefore prefer the abolition of this portion of 

 our penal code, and its substitution by one Act treating the 

 poacher as a thief, and making the same punitory distinction 

 between day poaching, night poaching and the poaching 

 affray, as are made respectively, say, between petty larceny, 

 burglary, and robbery with violence. 



We come now to the other phase of this question, namely 

 how far the existing Game Laws protect the community's 

 purse from losses by over-preservation ? 



That farmers and land-agents have always deprecated 

 excessive game preservation, history affords no uncertain 

 evidence. Ever since the rabbit ceased to be regarded as a 

 part of the profitable livestock of the farm, ground game has 



