72 MAKING A FISHERY 



means of earning a living is by poaching. They 

 are usually the most dissolute, the most in- 

 temperate, and altogether most repulsive looking 

 set of scoundrels. Offer any one of them an 

 honest day's work for a fair rate of wages and 

 he will indignantly refuse it. Nay, more, offer 

 him double the ordinary labourer's pay, and he 

 will either find some excuse for declining it, or 

 if he pretends to work will shirk and scamp to 

 such an extent, that no one can employ him. 

 Even if by chance he should work for a single 

 week, it is safe to predict that he will be found 

 at the village pothouse on Saturday night with 

 some of his boon companions, more or less 

 intoxicated. There he will remain, excepting 

 during the hours when by law the pothouse 

 must be closed, until every farthing of his 

 wages has been squandered, and his credit, 

 if he has any, exhausted. All this time his 

 wife and children will be half starved, clothed 

 in rags, living in squalid misery in a cottage 

 from which the landlord is threatening to eject 

 them for non-payment of a rent of two or three 

 shillings a week. 

 Magistrates' Magistrates, unless deterred by a wholesome 



dread of appearing in the week's " Legal 

 Pillory " in Truth, will usually pass exemplary 

 sentences on game poachers. It is, however, 

 unfortunate that, when dealing with habitual 



sentences. 



