GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 



The secret pleasure felt by vulgar minds in caus- 

 ing vexation to those whom they regard as oppres- 

 sors, and consequently as having assumed a power in- 

 compatible with reason and justice; the ready sale 

 for game, and emolument arising therefrom; toge- 

 ther with the protection and encouragement expe- 

 rienced from many respectable characters, stimulate 

 the poacher not only to exertion, but to schemes and 

 invention, which otherwise he would think too dan- 

 gerous, or not worth his attention. 



Daily experience, in fact, evinces the futility of at- 

 tempting to preserve game, by that invidious method 

 so generally adopted, viz. of most tenaciously, ar- 

 bitrarily, and indiscriminately prohibiting sporting 

 upon manors in general ; appointing numerous guards 

 to protect the game (who, mostly, are as great 

 poachers as any in the kingdom), and prosecuting 

 with litigious seventy in every case where it is possi- 

 ble for an action to lie. Much, however, to the cre- 

 dit of some of the English judges, many of these ac- 

 tions, when brought to trial, have been spurned wills 

 contempt. Lord Elienborough has, more than once, 

 expressed his disapprobation of these vexatious law- 

 suits; and when, about three years ago, a trial came 

 before him for a poor man taking up a hare that had 

 been caught in a snare, his lordship observed, that he 

 by no means wished to stretch the game laws ; but the 

 words in the act were so plain, making the mere 

 possession penal, that the jury must find him guilty. In 

 the case oi'Harker v. Allen, at the York spring assizes^ 



