WASTE LANDS AND WASTE WATERS. 157 



111 iiuiny of these sites, air and exercise after 

 a snipe "or two — not the ^^ solitary snipe," for he 

 would be more worth the trouble — are the only 

 solaces to the cruel (so-called) and aristocratic 

 proprietors, who avail themselves of wliat the 

 ^^stumjo" and Cockney orators call ^Hhe bloody 

 Game Laws," though those laws, in this instance, 

 afford scarce any blood at all. Fancy a large 

 landowner retaining a desert under his control for 

 one shot at, perhaj^s, a jack snipe ! 



Now I. would ask these stump men and ^'hest^^ 

 abusers (I borrow this word, in this instance, from 

 my late friend, the ^^ O'Connell, " as the stump orators 

 l)orrow from liim the scmgninarij name they apphj 

 to the WJdgs, they could not liave invented 

 a strong word themselves) to point out to that 

 universal, and soon to be, if left to them, bandy- 

 legged bantling, the '' Constitution," what is to 

 be, or can l)e, done with the at present unprofit- 

 able land they allude to ? — what ought to be done 

 with it, what can be grown on it, and what 

 manner of produce from it is to fill the poor 

 bantling's stomach ? 



I ought not to ask tliese restless men this ques- 

 tion before I have described to them the nature 



