GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 247 



tures; and both productive of the same tyranny to 

 the commons : but with this difference that the fo- 

 rest laws established only one mighty hunter through- 

 out the land, the game laws have raised a little Nim- 

 rod in every manor. And in one respect the ancient 

 law was much less unreasonable than the modern : for 

 the king's grantee of a chase or free-warren might 

 kill game in every part of his franchise ; but now, 

 though a freeholder of less than one hundred pounds 

 a year is forbidden to kill a partridge upon his own 

 estate, yet nobody else (not even the lord of the ma- 

 nor, unless he hath a grant of free-warren) can do it 

 without committing a trespass, and subjecting him- 

 self to an action." 



I will also take leave to transcribe the words of a fa- 

 vourite author,* Speaking on this subject, he ob- 

 serves : " What can be more arbitrary than to talk of 

 preserving the game, which, when defined, means no 

 more than that the poor shall abstain from what the 

 rich have taken a fancy to keep for themselves ? If 

 these birds could, like a cock or a hen, be made legal 

 property, could they be taught to keep within certain 

 districts, and only feed on those grounds that belong 

 to the man whose entertainments they improve, it 

 then might with some show of justice be admitted, 

 that as a man fed them, so he might claim them. 

 But this is not the case : nor is it in the power of 

 any man to lay a restraint upon the liberty of these 



* Goldsmith. 



