304 HINTS ON ANGLING. 



undergo a speedy and searching revision, with a view to 

 some comprehensive alteration and amelioration. It is 

 useless for the advocates of exclusiveness to deny the 

 fact that these laws, in their present form, are generally 

 detested through the country; and that they constitute a 

 fertile source of the acknowledged increasing degeneracy 

 of the English peasantry. These unjust laws seem to 

 tell them that they are to have no enjoyments except in 

 the beer-shops; that every slight recreation by which 

 they may alleviate their condition is to be churlishly 

 forbidden; and that ceaseless, unmitigated, hopeless toil 

 is to be their legalised portion. And how, indeed, can 

 they think otherwise, when they find the poor wretch 

 who snares a hare or kills a fish for a starving family, is 

 subjected to a severer punishment and a deeper degrada- 

 tion, than the remorseless scoundrel who lives by swind- 

 ling the unsuspecting ; or the shameless lady of rank, who, 

 unurged by misery and want, steals his lawful and 

 undoubted property from the counter of some industrious 

 or perhaps needy tradesman? 



The statesman who will deal justly and fearlessly with 

 these bad laws, treat them with a high hand, and look 

 only to the public good, will do more to shut up county 

 jails, and empty union workhouses, than all the law- 

 tinkers during the last half century put together. 



We once had a conversation on this subject with a 

 Yorkshire peasant a fine fellow who was a day- 

 labourer in the village where his grandfather had formerly 

 been a small occupier. His remarks were shrewd, tem- 

 perate, and for the most part, just. His head was full of 

 natural good sense; and his ideas were delivered under 

 the calm and settled conviction that, although his own 

 chance was pretty well over, a brighter day would 



