THE RENTED MANOR. ' 35 



of haros and killing of rabbits to the tenantry; 

 such liberty is for ever attended with unsatis- 

 factory results. A tenant himself, or his good 

 and valuable farming men, have no time to destroy 

 rabbitSj and rabbits cannot be destroyed except 

 in the woods; the consequence is, therefore, that 

 they, the tenants, assign the killing of the few 

 rabbits really within their power, in banks and 

 hedgerows, to ratcatchers or poaching thieves, 

 who are willing enough to accept a footing on 

 the lands without payment, in order to have 

 opportunities for illegal depredations, and to 

 carry off game as well as rabbits and foxes, 

 leaving with the farmer a few rabbits for eating 

 by w^ay of cloak to the mischief which they have 

 really been doing to all parties. 



I have seen a great deal of this in instances 

 when I have been asked to re-arrange affairs, 

 and to obviate abuses upon estates left in the 

 possession and under the control of ladies ; and 

 in almost every instance in which farmers have 

 been given the right to the rabbits, and where 

 they had been exercising the right to preserve 

 them under plea of their ^' destruction,'' I have 



found not only the farmer's crops suffering from 



D 2 



