240 THE FORESTS OF ENGLAND. 



" The partiality and injustice of this code is further 

 apparent, in the attempts of the lords of manors to pre- 

 serve the monopoly of the game in themselves or their 

 deputies, by limiting the right, or qualification to kill it, 

 to the owner of ^100 per annum ; while a man, having 

 any quantity of land less than the above partial and 

 unjust limitation, is prohibited from killing a hare or a 

 partridge in his own field or garden. The absurdity of 

 the game laws is obvious ; because the very man who 

 cannot kill a hare on his own field or garden, can prevent* 

 the one qualified by law from killing it there, by action 

 of tresspass and damages, and previous discharge from his 

 premises. Is it necessary here to call the attention of the 

 reader to the absolute impossibility of rendering any law, 

 authorising a marauder to enter the property of another 

 man, under pretence of killing game, compatible with the 

 sacred security of property, so imperiously demanding the 

 attention, of every legislator ; but, in addition to this, 

 what ought to be the character of that law, which 

 demands ten times as much to qualify a man to kill a 

 partridge, as it does to qualify a juror to kill a man? In 

 fact, since all these laws, instead of preserving the game 

 for the rightful owner, have been fabricated in the genuine 

 spirit of a grasping monopoly, the present property in the 

 game is completely vested in the hands of the nocturnal 

 poacher, who has, in most manors, even the undisputed 

 possession; indeed it is a necessary consequence of all 

 unjust laws, to create the very thing they are intended to 

 prevent. 



" On the whole, these game laws form a grievance to 

 the cultivator of the soil, not only because he is generally 

 debarred from any part of a pleasure which the game on 

 his farm might occasionally furnish, and to which he seems 

 to have so natural a right; but because his crops and 

 fences are frequently injured by men, with their horses 

 and dogs, taking liberties utterly inconsistent with that 

 security of property which ought to be held inviolable 

 in all civilised countries. 



