GAME LAWS. HAD Usbek, the traveller, mentioned in the Lettres Persanes, visited England, we can imagine that he might have addressed his friend Rustan in the following terms: "In Persia, dear Rustan, the object of Legislation is the general welfare; but if you look to the acts of the English Legislature, you will be inclined to think that the chief aim is the starvation, impoverishment, and demoralization of the people. The Corn Laws create an artificial scarcity, and, by raising the price of food, prevent the extension of manufactures and commerce, and consequently limit the employment of the people; the Revenue Laws encourage perjury as well as fraud in all its ramifications; the Poor Laws, as here administered, remove from the lower orders the incentives to industry and frugality, give an improper stimulus to the population, and thus, in combination with the Corn Laws, occasion misery and poverty; and the Game Laws form the nursery in which the peasantry are gradually but effectually trained to the execution of the crimes of robbery and murder. Honest industry is here fettered, or altogether restrained by the privileges of corporations, by the surveillance of revenue officers, by the system of licences, which can only be procured by considerable labour, through favour, or at some expense, or by the exaction of stamp duties—a tax which, when levied on the exercise of professions or trades, has all the odium of a poll tax, without the quality which makes that tax in some degree tolerable, the universality of the burden. The consequences are what you might naturally expect, my dear Rustan; a criminal code written in blood, many hundreds of men annually condemned to death, and notwithstanding, crimes abounding to a degree unknown in any other civilized country, and steadily and rapidly increasing; every eighth person a beggar, receiving parochial relief; the poor rates already absorbing one-sixth of the rental of the whole real property of the kingdom, with the prospect, at the present rate of increase, that the whole lands and houses in England will, before the end of this century, be the patrimony. of the poor. As if the means of punishing the people were not sufficient, and as if the great end of society was to fill jails, and give employment to jailers, new offences are created, and petty delinquencies are swelled. to the rank of crimes. Thus, to the progress of civilization Britain owes forgery, smuggling, and many other offences which annually yield a long list of victims to the criminal law. In our dear country, Rustan, you know it is thought that the evils attending a state of matters in which an act, in itself innocent, must be prevented at the expense of the blood or protracted imprisonment of the actor, must be submitted to only if the prohibition of the act is essential to the existence or welfare of society; but that the rights and liberties of the subject should never be infringed, merely to afford to a small class of the community a childish, not to say savage and brutal amusement. But these proud Islanders are ignorant of all our eastern notions of Government."-Such might possibly be the reflections of an Eastern sage, who had derived his notions of English Legislation from a discontented Radical, and from whom the beneficial consequences of that legislation had been concealed. But we must now turn from conjecturing what Usbek, in his ignorance, might have thought to the consideration of the matter in hand. The existence of Game Laws in any country is of itself a proof of its con man. quest by foreigners; in England these laws are the badge of the slavery in which the people were held by their Norman victors. By these invaders were vast tracts of country depopulated, and formed into forests, in which were exercised the most horrid tyrannies and oppressions, under colour of Forest Law, for the sake of preserving the beasts of chase; to kill any of which, within the limits of the forest, was as penal as the death of a "From this root has sprung a bastard slip known by the name of the Game Law, now arrived at, and wantoning in its highest vigour ; both founded upon the same unreasonable notions of permanent property in wild creatures, and both productive of the same tyranny to the Commons; but with this difference, that the Forest Laws established only one mighty hunter throughout the land,-the Game Laws have raised a little Nimrod in every manor."* The code of law for the preservation of Game is also of a very unusual and singular nature; and contains provisions, elevating pheasants and partridges, hares and rabbits, far above the human species. In the case of mere mankind, preparations for their injury or destruction, unless carried a great length, and until some steps towards the actual perpetration of the crime have been taken, are not cognisable by any human tribunal. Thus, the preparing, purchasing, or having in one's possession, poison, daggers, or other instruments used for assassination, the loading of fire-arms to commit a murder, however clearly the intention may be proved, are not acts for which any one can be punished. Even the forging of bills or bank notes, if they are not issued or used, is not, at common law, a criminal act. In the opinion of criminal lawyers one may go farther with impunity, and take some steps towards the actual perpetration of the crime. Thus, it is far from clear, that a person could be punished to any extent, were he caught in his neighbour's stack-yard with his tinder-box, matches, and a dark lantern, and though his intention to set the stacks on fire could be proved by clear evidence; or one with fire-arms, who lies in wait in the night time, at a concerted spot, for an expected passenger, to rob and murder him; but the intended victim takes another road, or delays his journey, and so escapes. The reason is obvious: human tribunals ought not, and do not punish a man for his intentions, but for his acts; and notwithstanding the near approach which, in the above cases, is made to the actual commission of crime, still after all, fear, remorse, a moment's confusion, some accidental alarm might have prevented an attempt from being made. There is time to repent and desist from the enterprise; and the law charitably presumes that he would not put his purpose in execution.† "Between the acting of a dreadful thing Are then in council; and the state of man, These are the considerations on which legislators act, when mankind are concerned but when the sports of the aristocracy are to be preserved, very different principles are adopted. The persons who prepare statutes relating to game, know nothing of law, and care nothing for the principles of justice. Blackstone remarks that one may judge what sort of persons the penners of the Game Laws are, by the fact that, in one sta Shakspeare's Julius Cæsar. tute, there are in six different places errors in grammar, besides a variety of other blunders. Yet under this statute, many people have been of late years convicted. The great principle these lawgivers adopted, was to punish to the utmost, and to an equal extent, all who touched the subject of their sports, dead or alive, or even the egg which by possibility might become a bird. Thus, from a Parliamentary Return, we learn that at one time in the month of November 1831, there were no fewer than FIVE HUNDRED AND NINETY-EIGHT persons in jail in England alone, exclusive of Wales, for offences against the Game Laws; the greater number of whom were punished for merely making preparations towards the destroying of game; when, according to the principles we have laid down, preparations to an equal extent for the murder of a human being, must have been passed over without notice. We have men confined for three or six months, for “using snares;” "for using a dog with intent to kill game;"" for attempting to destroy a fallow deer;" "setting snares ;"" keeping snares;" "keeping a dog and a gun;" "keeping a dog;" "keeping and using a gun." Verily, if the Game Laws were rigidly enforced, it is difficult to say who would be out of jail. Another sacred rule of law is violated in the game code. In other cases a Judge is not allowed to try a case in the issue of which he is interested; but almost all those accused of offences against the Game Laws are tried by the Justices of the Peace-by those men against whom the offence is committed; and generally in the most summary style, without giving the accused due time or means for his defence, and before a single Magistrate. The English clergy, in their character of Justices, seem to offi ciate on such occasions con amore; and it is shocking to see reverend gentlemen, to whom the morals of the peasantry are intrusted, sentencing men to the society of felons for months, by which their characters and morals must be inevitably ruined, merely for having a snare, a yard of brass wire with a noose on it, in their possession. Then, in other parts of the criminal law, a distinction is made between the punishment of the actual perpetrator, and of him who merely aids in some inferior degree. Thus, robbery is a capital crime: but we never heard of any one being hanged for receiving the stolen goods. But he who has in his possession a hare, or who offers to sell it, is punished in precisely the same degree with him who has killed it; and a man lately suffered six months' imprisonment in Winchester Jail" for having part of a fallow deer in his possession." We regret the name of the Magistrate who convicted him is not mentioned. But we must record in our pages that " John Holt, Esq., Magistrate," sentenced a woman, Ellen Holland, to 84 days' imprisonment in the Preston House of Correction, for "having unlawfully had in her possession one hare and exposing it for sale." In the Millbank General Penitentiary, there are seven men imprisoned for five years and one for seven, for poaching, "unlawfully entering enclosed land, armed, with intent to destroy game." One of these men, John Wood, has been already six years and a half in jail" for poaching on the lands of Lady Suffield," and some of the others have been nearly five years. It will be observed, that these protracted periods of punishment are awarded for merely killing game; not one of these men is accused of assaulting gamekeepers, a species of conflict which the Game Laws often occasion. or From the year 1820 to 1826, 12,000 individuals were committed to the county jails in England for offences against the Game Laws; and we may infer from the above return, that there are at all times six hundred persons in confinement for such offences. Of the more serious crimes to which the preservation of game gives rise, we have no account; but there can be little doubt the number must be great. To say nothing of the human misery thus occasioned, let us see what it costs the country. The average expense of keeping culprits in the English jails is very nearly L.40 each person; and therefore L.24,000 is paid annually in England for keeping poachers. Suppose now the 600 prisoners have 400 wives and 800 children, these must, of course, be maintained by the poor's rates; and their maintenance cannot cost less than L.10,000 more. We allow nothing for the expense of building jails, and for the administration of the Game Laws against so many offenders. If these expenses were taken into account, the cost of preventing poaching would probably be doubled. Millbank Penitentiary, for example, cost for building upwards of half a million; and as the chaplain, surgeon, &c. must have handsome salaries, it requires L.20,000 per annum for its maintenance; and the annual expense of a convict there, is between L.50 and L60. The keeping of John Wood, " from poaching on the lands of Lady Suffield," will cost the public L.350, by the time his seven years' imprisonment is expired, and the maintenance of his wife and children possibly L.150 more; so that the preservation of Lady Suffield's pheasants from one poacher, for seven years, costs the public L.500. Well may foreigners have a high idea of the wealth of England, when they see public money so absurdly lavished. As a further proof of the absurdity of the system, let us see what happens when a poacher cannot, or will not pay a pecuniary penalty. We have Joseph West confined in Huntingdon jail for two months, for refusing to pay forty shillings of penalty. But Joseph's maintenance costs L.6; and so the public pay L.6, because Joseph will not pay L.2. One will naturally ask, for what purpose are the boldest and most active of our peasantry demoralized-so much human misery createdso much money expended? To enable a few of the aristocracy to have two or three days' shooting in the year! For the amusement must not be indulged in often. The great matter is to have a grand battue, a huge slaughter in a single day. It is a matter of boast among the squirearchy, when they have at one time massacred hundreds of game. The feat is blazoned in the newspapers; and then the breeding of pheasants is sedulously encouraged, and immense numbers reared by the gamekeepers, to await another battue. We consider the sports of the field, when moderately indulged in, and in the old style, a healthy, invigorating, and gentlemanly amusement; but as now practised by the game preservers, it is a mere brutal massacre, fitter for butchers than English gentlemen. It is noway superior, or indeed different, from shooting poultry in a court-yard or in a hen-roost, a feat for which schoolboys are whipped. What should be done with their seniors? The Scottish lairds have of late years been following the example of the English squires in the preservation of the game. As a necessary consequence, the miseries of the Game Laws were beginning to affect Scotland; and these laws have of late years been rather rigorously enforced in the more aristocratic counties. The apprehension of a poacher was a grand event, more especially, if it happened during a frost when there could be no hunting or shooting, and the lairds were consequently at their wits' end for amusement. The horses were got out of the stables; the lairds and their retainers mounted; some rode after the poachers, some for the constables, others to the justices; while carts were preparing to convey the poachers to the county jail. It was quite a field day, and the best possible amusement, after fighting cats and terriers, in a frosty forenoon. After dinner, also, it afforded a subject for conversation; which would otherwise have lagged, from the want of a fox chase in the early part of the day to talk about. But somehow, poacher-hunting has not been much indulged in during the last year or two. It was found to be an amusement which made the peasantry rather sulky; and after the events of the "Three Days," the possibility of the game becoming the pursuers or of standing resolutely at bay, began to be calculated. We, therefore, find only six poachers in jail in all Scotland in November 1831, and three of these in the county of Ayr. The small number of convictions, certainly, does not arise from a diminution of poaching; for the markets never were better supplied with game than at present, and the poachers have become much more bold. The only holiday the Scottish peasantry have, is Auld Hansel Monday; and part of the amusements of that day, thirty or forty years ago, was shooting game. For the last twenty years, however, the power of the game preservers became so great, that all attempts to kill game on that day were effectually repressed. But last year, the old practice was revived to a small degree; and on Hansel Monday, this year, the peasantry in East Lothian sallied out boldly into the open fields, in large bands, and killed an immense quantity of game, and there was not the slightest attempt made to prevent them. Neither have any prosecutions been instituted in consequence of that day's proceedings, though there could be no difficulty in identifying many of those who sacrilegiously indulged in these privileged sports. The truth is, the attention of the Aristocracy has been taken up with much more serious matters; and being well aware of the feeling of the inhabitants of towns towards them, they were unwilling to exasperate the peasantry by the enforcement of the Game Laws. Their eagerness to raise corps of yeomanry again, made them even occasionally indulge their tenantry with a day's shooting in their preserves. A little coaxing was necessary. Things were beginning to assume an inauspicious aspect. The tenantry no longer appeared in the hunting field, to swell the cortége of their lairds; and shooting was given up from the feeling which prevents the asking or receiving of a favour from one for whom we have no great liking.-High rents and low prices are causing a coolness in the tenantry towards their lairds, which it is thought inexpedient to increase at present by disputes about game. To the agitation of the grand question of Reform, we are to attribute the change lately effected in the Game Laws of England. Qualifications are now abolished: every man with a license is entitled to shoot where he has liberty, whether he be an "Esquire" or not. A great number of the older statutes which inflicted severe punishments for the slightest offences, have been repealed, and milder punishments substituted; and the sale of game has been made lawful. For what reason it is difficult to discover, this act is declared not to extend to Scotland; and we are, therefore, liable to all the penalties, not only of the old Scottish statutes, but also of the numerous British statutes now repealed in England; for, we presume, it must be held, that the clause repealing these statutes does not extend to Scotland any more than the other parts of the act. The Scottish law requires revision as much as the English did. If one inquires, Who is a qualified person in Scotland? he is told, |