M THE SHOOTERS GUIDE. 



also, if they kill game within the limits of any royal 

 franchise, they are liable to the actions of such who 

 may have the right of chase or free warren therein." 

 Blackstone, under the head Public Wrongs, ob- 

 serves, " another violent alteration of the English 

 constitution consisted in the depopulation of whole 

 countries, for the purposes of the king's royal diver- 

 sion ; and subjecting both them and all the ancient 

 forests of the kingdom to the unreasonable severity of 

 forest laws imported from the continent, whereby the 

 ^laughter of a beast was made almost as penal as the 

 death of a man. In the Saxon times, though no mau 

 was allowed to kill or chase the king's deer, yet he 

 might start any game, pursue and kill it, upon his own 

 estate. But the rigour of these new constitutions 

 vested the sole property of all the game in England 

 in the king alone ; and no man was entitled to dis- 

 turb any fowl of the air, or any beast of the field, of 

 such kinds as were specially reserved for the royal 

 amusement of the sovereign, without express licence 

 from the king, by a grant of a chase or free warren: 

 and those franchises were granted as much with a 

 view to preserve the breed of animals, as to indulge 

 the subject. From a similar principle to which, 

 though the forest laws are now mitigated, and by de- 

 grees grown entirely obsolete, yet from this root has 

 sprung a bastard slip, known by the name of the 

 game law, now arrived to and wantoning in its 

 highest vigour ; both founded upon the same unrea- 

 sonable notions of permanent property in wild crea- 



