47- History of the English Landed Interest. 



bsen banned by all earnest Husbandmen. Thus, for example, 

 Edward Lawrence, the land-surveyor who flourished in 1726, 

 expresses a wish " to abolish the keeping of rabbits and much 

 game of any kind," and Nathaniel Kent of Fulham, an equally 

 impartial critic, who wrote in 1776, advises " lenity, for- 

 bearance and confidence," in all matters connected with game, 

 pointing out that farmers are better guardians of, and do 

 their duty more ably to it, than any keeper. Marshall, a 

 land agent of Norfolk, who wrote the Rural Economy in 1786, 

 protests against the practice of overbreeding all kinds of 

 game, and Defoe in his Tour through Britain in 1769, speaking 

 of this same county, describes the pheasants on its stubbles 

 " as plentiful as domestic fowls," and concludes therefrom that 

 its landlords were " more tradesmen than gentry." Arthur 

 Young objected to too many hares and rabbits on wider 

 principles, citing as a reason for his dislike an instance where 

 the landowner preserved so much ground-game that the tenant 

 decided to sow no more carrots. It was not the hardship to 

 the tenant to which Young objected, for he expressly relates 

 how the man's landlord had generously compensated him for 

 h:s looses, but it was the regret of a true farmer that such 

 drawbacks to general good husbandry should remain un- 

 checked.' 



Prompted by the same laudable motive, the State in 1881 

 once more interfered with seignorial rights ; but had Sir 

 AVilliam Harcourt who fathered the Ground Game Act of that 

 year, been a land-steward, he would probably have based his 

 policy on Kent's opinion (shared, be it remembered, by that 

 champion of the squirearchy Lord Beaconsfield), and in abolish- 

 ing gamekeepers, have both preserved the sport of shooting 

 and protected the interests of farming. 



' Annals of Agriculture, vol. ii. p. 13G. 1774. 



