6 EEMIXISCEXCES OF A SPORTSMAN. 



that no one can delegate the right to sport on another 

 person's land.* 



Blackstone confirms- what I have above stated, re- 

 specting the trespassing on another person s land. He 

 says, " But it follows from the very end and constitution 

 of society, that this natural right, as many others belong- 

 ing to man, may be restrained by positive laws enacted 

 for reasons of state, or for the supposed benefit of the 

 community ; and, in consequence of this authority, we 

 find that the municipal laws of many nations have 

 exerted such powers of restraint, as have, in general, for- 

 bidden the entering on another man's grounds, for any 

 cause, without the owner's leave. There are substantial 

 and good reasons for enacting these laws 1st. : For the 

 encouragement of agriculture and improvement of lands, 

 by giving every man an exclusive dominion over his own 

 soil. 2nd. For the preservation of the several species 

 of those animals which would soon be extirpated by a 

 general liberty. 3rd. For prevention of idleness and 

 dissipation among husbandmen, artificers, and others of 

 lower rank, which would be the unavoidable consequence 

 of universal licence." Puffendorff, on this subject, thus 

 writes : " The law does not hereby take from any man 

 his present property, or what was alrea,dy his own, but 

 barely abridges him of one means of acquiring a future 



* I was lord of two manors in Cambridgeshire ; in one of them I had 

 eight hundred acres of freehold, and as the greater part of this parish 

 was unenclosed I shot all over the open fields, and had very good 

 partridge shooting. In the adjoining parish I possessed no lauded 

 property, receiving only small fines as lord of the manor from the copy- 

 holders, but in this parish were about forty acres of common, and 

 although I had the right to shoot as lord of the manor, yet I never did, 

 as the game was strictly preserved by the late Lord Maryborough, 

 brother of the Duke of "Wellingtou, 



