196 



Philadelphia Agricultural Society. 



Vol. IX. 



and Auo-tist, in each and every year there- 

 after, any robin, flicker, blue bird, wood- 

 pecker, sapsucker, tluiish, or other insectiv- 

 erous bird, under a penalty of five dollars 

 for each and every offence. 



By section 2nd, no person shall shoot or 

 otherwise kill ni the said counties, any 

 pheasant between the first days of February 

 and September ; nor any partridge between 

 the first day of February and the 20th of 

 September; nor any woodcock between the 

 1st of January and the 1st of July; nor any 

 rabbit between the 1st of February and the 

 15th of October, in any year hereafter, under 

 a penalty of .$10 for each and every oftence; 

 the sum or fine to be recovered before any 

 alderman or justice of the peace, as debts of 

 similar amount are by law recoverable, one 

 half of the fine for tlie use of the informer, 

 and the other half for the use of the county. 



This Act shall not prevent any person or 

 persons from shooting' or otherwise killing- 

 game or insectiverous birds, on his, her, or 

 their own property, at any season of the year. 



This Act does not interfere with any e.x- 

 isting law or laws, to prevent trespass or the 

 firing of guns near public highways. 



Farmers will see from these enactments 

 of the legislature, that this body appreciates 

 their wants in the matter before us, and 

 most decidedly with equity, and even with 

 stern severity, places its rebuke on the in- 

 juries done to them by lawless trespassers. 

 Wotliing appears wanting, as respects both 

 the disposition and the action of the law- 

 makers of the State; they have done all 

 that the agricultural community could ask, 

 and more than enough to show how deep 

 they conceive the wrongs to be, done by 

 these persons to this large and respectable! 

 body of their fellow citizens, and how ne- 

 cessary they thought it to be to show theirj 

 sense of the outrage, by the passage ofj 

 strong penal enactments. That the laws 

 are of no avail, that farmers still suffer and 

 still complain, is no fault of the legislature ; 

 they have acted as if impelled by the health- 

 iest public opinion, and no doubt did at the 

 time of making these laws, as it is to be 

 hoped they ever will, represent that portion 

 of society which feels that it has rights of| 

 its own, and is in this way made to feel for 

 those of others. Tlie larger part of the 

 State legislature are farmers, much the 

 larger part of the remainder, men who re- 

 present agricultural districts ; few are from 

 large towns, and none perhaps, so far re- 

 moved from the country, as not to be alive 

 to its importance, or so far as to lose all 

 sympathy with it. The agricultural com- 

 munity cannot then lose its authority, nor is 



it probable that its action upon the public 

 mind will ever be so far diminished, as that 

 any assembly of men will ever meet in the 

 State and dare openly to do anything which 

 is opposed to their wishes or their will; why 

 is it then, tliat where the immense majority 

 of our people are of one mind, and no oppo- 

 sition is or can be offered to them — why is it 

 that this large and intelligent class, strong 

 enough to upheave the whole basis of State 

 action, still almost like children, complain 

 of these petty annoyances and wrongs, com- 

 mitted too, by a worthless class of men, for 

 vvhose correction these enactments were es- 

 pecially made, and for whose punishment 

 the law is especially anxious. It would per- 

 haps be an injustice, in all probability an 

 untruth, to say that these wrongs and these 

 annoyances were the fault of the agricultu- 

 ral community itself; that they and none 

 others were responsible, for this defiance of 

 the law of which they complain, as well as 

 for the deep injury done to the cause of 

 morals, to the character of the institutions 

 they love and sustain, to the cause of justice 

 and the general esteem and character of the 

 country. It would be too daring a proceed- 

 ing to bring the larger portion of our fellow 

 citizens thus under the ban, and to hold 

 them up to execration and contempt, by this 

 seeming trifling with laws so judicious, and 

 so expressly made for their benefit ; which 

 they themselves acknowledge as just, and 

 which they may be considered as having 

 themselves framed. On whom then, must 

 the responsibility of all this mischief be 

 thrown'! It must rest somewhere; the com- 

 plaint is general; the evil must therefore 

 be common. It may appear to some a tri- 

 fling matter, that birds are killed — that 

 fences ai"e broken down in their pursuit — 

 that walls are thrown over — that poultry is 

 shot — orchards robbed — sheep and cattle 

 worried and destroyed — woods set on fire — 

 barns burnt — the farmer who acts in self- 

 defence or offers a reproach, insulted. All 

 this may appear to many, and especially to 

 those living in cities, as mutter not worthy 

 of complaint or reprobation, and as bringing 

 no charge on the general good condition of 

 public .sentiment and public morals. But 

 those who feel the evil, may be allowed to 

 feel very differently. They know not how 

 to draw the line between one kind of rob- 

 bery and another, between one species of 

 violation of individual rights and another — 

 between the burning of a barn in the coun- 

 try, and the burning of a house in the city 

 between assault and battery on a farmer, 

 and the same upon a member of any other 

 profession; nor between the menace of death 

 from a ruffian who holds a musket to your 



