Those who have been accustomed to watch the tactics of the Manchester party cannot have overlooked or forgotten the significant coincidence, in point of time, between Mr Bright's attack on the Game Laws, and the last grand assault upon the barrier which formerly protected British agriculture. That wily lover of peace among all orders of men saw how much it would assist the ultimate designs of his party to excite distrust and enmity between the two great divisions of the protectionist garrison—the owners and the cultivators of land; and the anti-game-law demonstration was planned for that purpose. The manoeuvre was rendered useless by the sudden and unconditional surrender of the fortress by that leader, whose system of defence has ever been, as Capefigue says—"cÉder incessamment." It is impossible, however, to disguise the true source of the sudden sympathy for the farmers' grievances, which in 1845 and 1846 yearned in the compassionate bowels of the agrarian leaders, and led to the lengthened inquiries of Mr Bright's committee. But it seems we are not yet done with the game-law agitation. It is true the last rampart of protection is levelled to the ground: but the subjugation of the country interest to the potentates of the factory is not yet accomplished. The owners of the soil have not yet bowed low enough to the Baal of free trade; their influence is not altogether obliterated, nor their privileges sufficiently curtailed; and therefore Mr Bright and the Anti-Game-Law Association have buckled on their armour once more, and the tenantry are again invited to join in the crusade against those who, they are assured, have always been their inveterate oppressors; and, to cut of as much as possible the remotest chance of an amicable settlement, it is proclaimed that no concession will be accepted—no proposal of adjustment listened to—short of the total and immediate abolition of every statute on the subject of game. The truth is, that this branch of the agitation trade is too valuable to be lost sight of by those who earn their bread or their popularity in that line of business. Hundreds of honest peasants, rotting in unwholesome gaols, their wives and children herded in thousands to the workhouse—hard-working tenants sequestrated by a grasping and selfish aristocracy—these are all too fertile topics for the platform philanthropist to be risked by leaving open any door for conciliation; and therefore the terms demanded are such as it is well known cannot be accepted. Our attention has been attracted to the doings of an association which has for its professed object the abolition of all game laws, and which has recently opened a new campaign in Scotland, under the leadership of the chief magistrate of Edinburgh, and one of the representatives of the city. Of course the construction of such societies is no longer a mystery to any one; and that under our notice appears to be got up on the most approved pattern, and with all the newest improvements. A staff of active officials directs its movements, and collects funds—lecturers, pamphleteers, newspaper editors are paid or propitiated. From the raw material of Mr Bright's blue-books the most exaggerated statements and calculations of the most zealous witnesses are carefully picked out, and worked up into a picture, which is held up to a horrified public as a true representation of the condition of the rural districts; and the game laws become, in the hands of such artists, a monster pestilence, enough to have made the hair of Pharaoh himself to stand on end. It is not to be wondered at if some, who have not had the opportunity of investigating for themselves the effects of these laws, have been misled by the bold ingenuity of the professed fabricators of grievances; but it is a fact which we shall again have occasion to notice, that they have made but little impression on the tenant farmers. Of the few members of that class who have taken an active share in the But while we are willing to allow for a certain leaven of misled sincerity among the supporters of this association, it is evident that, among its most active and influential leaders, the relief of the farmer or the relaxation of penal laws is not the real object. We shall show from their own writings and speeches the most convincing proof that they contemplate far more extensive and fundamental changes than the mere abolition of the game laws. There is not, indeed, much congruity or system in the opinions which we shall have to quote; but in one point it will be seen that they all concur—a vindictive hostility to the possessors of land, and an eager desire to abridge or destroy the advantages attached, or supposed to be attached, to that description of property. Thus the system of entails—the freedom of real property from legacy and probate duty—the landlord's preferable lien for the rent of his land, figure in the debates of the abolitionist orators, along with other topics equally relevant to the game laws, as oppressive burdens on the industry of the country. The system of the tenure of land, also, is pronounced to be a crying injustice; and one gentleman modestly insists on the necessity of a law for compelling the landlord to make payment to his tenant at the expiry of every lease for any increase in the value of the farm during his occupation. The author of an "Essay on the Evils of Game-Laws," which the association rewarded with their highest premium, and which, therefore, we are fairly entitled to take as an authorised exposition of their sentiments, thus enlarges on "the withering and ruinous thraldom" to which the farmers are subjected by a system of partial legislation. "No individual," he complains, "of this trade has ever risen to importance and dignity in the state. While merchants of every other class, lawyers, and professional men of every other class, have often reached the highest honours which the crown has to bestow, no farmer has ever yet attained even to a seat in the legislature, or to any civic title of distinction; uncertain as the trade is naturally, and harassed and weighed down by those sad enactments the game laws, to be enrolled among the class of farmers is now tantamount to saying, that you belong to a caste which is for ever excluded from the rewards of fair and honourable ambition."—(Mr Cheine Shepherd's Essay. Edinburgh, 1847.) The association of the game laws with the scorns which "patient merit of the unworthy takes," is at least ingenious. We confess, with Mr Cheine Shepherd, that the aspect of the times is wofully discouraging to any hope that a coronet, "or even the lowest order of knighthood," will in our days become the usual reward for skill "In small-boned lambs, the horse-hoe, or the drill." We cannot flatter him with the prospect of becoming a Cincinnatus; or that we shall live to see the time when muck shall make marquisates as well as money; and perhaps the best ad "Pascite, ut ante, boves, pueri—submittite tauros." Absurd, however, as the complaint of this ambitious Damon appears, it indicates at least the extent of change which he and his patrons of the association think they may justly demand. It is not, then, redress of game-law grievances they aim at, but an indefinite change in the social and political system of the country. If any one doubts this, let him read the following extract from the address of Mr Wilson of Glassmount:— "Much organic change must, however, precede the reforms for which they were now agitating. The suffrage must be extended.—(applause)—and, above all, the voters must be protected in the exercise of their functions by the ballot; for, in a country where so great a disparity existed between the social condition of the electoral body, parliamentary election, as now conducted under a system of open voting, was only a delusion and a mockery."—(Caledonian Mercury, Feb. 12, 1849.) From such an authority we cannot expect much amity towards the aristocracy, who, he says, "it is notorious, are, in point of political, scientific, and general knowledge, far behind those employed in commerce and manufactures." France and its institutions form a subject of constant eulogy to this gentleman, whose speeches show him to be by far the ablest, and, at the same time, the most straightforward of the League lecturers. He admonishes our landed proprietors to visit that country. "In the social condition of that country they would see the results of the abolition of those class privileges and distinctions which their order are still permitted to enjoy in England; and they would there find a widespread comfort in all the rural districts, which has been produced by the subdivision of property, and which is nowhere to be found in this country, where game laws, and laws of entail and primogeniture, are maintained for the exclusive amusement and aggrandisement," &c. We are willing to believe that Mr Wilson of Glassmount has never himself visited the country whose condition he longs to see resembled here; and that it is simply from ignorance that he eulogises the agricultural prosperity of a land where five bushels of wheat is the average yield of an imperial acre—where, in two generations, the landed system of the Code Napoleon has produced five and a-half millions of proprietors, the half of whom have revenues not exceeding £2 a-year, and whom the greatest statist of France describes as "propriÉtaires rÉpublicains et affamÉs." Our object, however, is not to reason with adversaries of this stamp, but simply to show, from their own words, the nature of the reforms they contemplate, under cover of a design to ameliorate the game laws. It may be said, indeed, that such indiscreet avowals of the more zealous members of the Anti-Game-Law Association cannot be fairly ascribed to its leaders. But though their language is, of course, more wary, it were easy to select from their orations even equally strong proofs of that bitter hostility to the landed interest, which prompts Mr Bright himself to cheer on his followers with the announcement that the people are ready to throw off "the burdens imposed on them by an aristocracy who oppress, grind them down, and scourge them;" and "that the time is now come to leach the pro A reference to the proceedings of the anti-game-law leaders will show that the specimens we have given are only fair samples of the factious spirit—the querulous, yet bullying and vindictive tone, in which they have conducted this controversy. No one can seriously believe that a hostility, directed not against these laws in particular, but against the whole social and political system of our country, can be founded on a wise and deliberate review of the effects of the statutes in question. Discontent with things in general is a disease which admits of no remedy, and which any ordinary treatment, by argument or concession, would only aggravate. There are many, however, of more moderate views, who are interested in knowing to what extent the complaints they have heard are founded on reason, and are capable of redress. We purpose, for the present, to limit our remarks principally to the operation of the Scotch law upon game, both because agitation on this subject has recently been most active on this side of the Tweed, and because we think the important differences in the game-laws of England and Scotland have not been sufficiently attended to, and have given rise to much popular misapprehension. All the abolition orators begin by telling us that game laws are a remnant of the feudal system—that they originated in the tyranny and oppression of the middle ages, and are, therefore, wholly unsuited to our improved state of society. Such an origin, of course, condemns them at once; for, in the popular mind, feudal law is somehow synonymous with slavery, rape, robbery, and all that is damnable. The truth is, however, that the game law of Scotland has no more connexion with the feudal law than with the code of Lycurgus. Even as regards England, there is good ground for questioning Blackstone's doctrine that the right to pursue and kill game is, in all cases, traceable to, and derived from, the crown. But in Scotland, at all events, there never existed any such exclusive system of forest laws as that which grew up under the Norman kings, and which King John was finally compelled to renounce. The broad and liberal principle out of which the Scotch game law has grown, is the maxim of the civil law—quod nullius est occupanti conceditur—that any one may lawfully appropriate and enjoy whatever belongs to no one else—a maxim which must necessarily form the fountainhead of all property. All wild animals, therefore, may be seized by any one, and the law will defend his possession of them. But out of this very principle itself there naturally springs a most important restriction of the common privilege of pursuing game; for the possessor of land, as well as the possessor of game, must be protected in the exclusive enjoyment of what (though originally res nullius) he has made his own by occupation or otherwise. It is evident, then, that the contingent right of the hunter to the animals he may succeed in seizing, can be exercised to its full extent only in an unoccupied and uncultivated country; and must give way, wherever the soil has become the subject of property, to the prior and perfect right of the landowner. Accordingly, we find that in the Roman law the affirmation of the common right to hunt wild animals is coupled with this important restriction, under the very same title—"Qui alienum fundum ingreditur, venandi aut aucupandi gratiÂ, potest a domino prohiberi ne ingrediatur;" and, notwithstanding the perplexed and anomalous nature of the tenure of land among the Romans, we find everywhere traces of a strict law of trespass, from the Twelve Tables down to Justinian. And in this the civil law was followed by that of Scotland. Subject to this inevitable restriction, and to a few regulative enactments of less importance, the privilege continued open to all, without distinction, up to the year 1621. The fiscal license, which was first required by the act 24th Geo. III. c. 43, cannot be justly regarded in the light of an infraction of the general principle of the Scotch law. Its direct object is not the limitation of the right of hunting, but the maintenance of the public revenue; and it will be readily admitted by all reasonable men that, on the one hand, there cannot be a less objectionable source of taxation than the privilege in question, and, on the other, that the duty is not excessive, when we find above 60,000 persons in Great Britain voluntarily subjecting themselves to it every year. The two other principal enactments regarding the pursuit of game in Scotland, commonly known as the Night and the Day Trespass Acts, 9 Geo. IV. c. 69, and 2 and 3 Will. IV. c. 68, cannot here be criticised in detail. Their provisions contain one or two anomalies which we shall have occasion to notice below, in suggesting some practicable amendments on the present law. But as to their general spirit, we venture to affirm that they are most legitimate developments of the general principle above stated. In every class of injuries to the rights of others, there are some species of the offence which, from their frequency, or from their being difficult to detect, must necessarily be prevented by more stringent prohibitions than those attached to the genus in general; and in the same way that orchards for example, timber, salmon fisheries, and many other subjects are protected by special penalties, so has it been found requisite to amplify the common law of trespass, in its application to that particular manner of trespass which is confessedly the most frequent and annoying. If the penalties are unnecessarily stringent, let them by all means be modified; but their severity, in comparison with the punishment of ordinary trespass, is not inconsistent with justice, or the principles of wise legislation. We have adverted, in this hasty sketch, only to the prominent features and growth of the law of Scotland; but a more detailed comparison with that of England and other countries of Europe, especially when recent statutes and decisions are taken into view, will fully justify the opinion of Hutcheson and other well qualified judges, that it is "the most liberal and enlightened of all laws as to game." It recognises, of course, no such thing as property in game more than in any other animals of a wild nature. The proprietor of a manor has no right to the pheasant he has fed until he shall have actually brought it to bag, or at least disabled it from escaping; and the right which he then first acquires is quite independent of his ownership of the land. To many the distinction thus created, by considering all game as wild animals, appears too theoretical; But it is time now to turn to those alleged evils, and to form some judgment as to whether they are in reality so weighty and numerous, that nothing short of the total abolition of the game laws can effectually check them. The abrogation of a law is no doubt an easy way of overcoming the difficulty of amending it—in the same way that the expedient of wearing no breeches will unquestionably save you the cost of patching them; and as a device for diminishing game-law offences, the total repeal of all game laws is perhaps as simple and efficacious a recipe as could well be conceived. But let us first inquire into the existence of the disease, before we resort to so summary a remedy. There are three distinct parties who are said to be injured by the operation of these laws—The community at large suffer chiefly by being deprived, it is alleged, of a very large proportion of the produce of the soil, which, if not consumed by game, would go to increase the stock of human food—The poacher has to bear the double injustice of a law which first makes the temptation, and then punishes the transgression—The farmer finds, in the protection given to game, a source of constant annoyance, loss, and disappointment. We shall take these complainants in their order. The public, (we are told by the enlightened commercial gentleman who represents the metropolis of Scotland,) the public have a right to see that none of the means for maintaining human life are wasted—a great popular principle popularly and broadly stated. It is possible, however, that Mr Cowan may not have contemplated all the admirable results of his principle. He may, perchance, not have seen that it sweeps away, not only every hare and pheasant, but every animal whatever that cannot be eaten or turned to profit in the ledger. His carriage horses eat as much as would maintain six poor paper-makers and their families; the keep of his children's pony would board and educate four orphans at the Ragged Schools. But we are not yet done The supposed amount of destruction by game of cereal and other produce, has afforded a fine field for the more erudite of the game law opponents. Mr Gayford's celebrated calculation, that three hares eat as much as a full-grown sheep, is generally assumed as the infallible basis of their estimates, and the most astounding results are evolved from it. But the actual waste of grain is not, it seems, the only way in which the public suffers. The annual cost to the community of prosecutions under the game acts is an enormous and annually increasing burden. This is proved, of course, by the same system of statistics run mad as that of which we have just given some specimens. The game convictions in the county of Bedford, it is discovered, were, in the year 1843, 36 per cent of the total male summary convictions; and the lovers of the marvellous, who listen to such statements, are quietly left to infer, not only that this is usually the case in Bedfordshire, but that a similar state of things prevails throughout England and Scotland also. They are sagacious enough, however, never to refer to general results. They carefully avoid any mention of We have now to make a remark or two on the plea set up on behalf of the poacher against the present game laws. What is it that makes a man become a poacher? "Temptation," says Mr Bright, "and temptation only. How can you expect that the poor but honest labourer, who, on his way home from his daily toil, sees hares and "A friendless man, at whose dejected eye Th'unfeeling proud one looks, and passes by." We shall not quarrel, however, with the fidelity of this fancy sketch; but we may be allowed to doubt whether any large proportion of those who incur penalties for game trespass have been led into temptation by the mere abundance of game in large preserves. Men of plain sense will think it just as fair to ascribe the frequency of larceny to the abundance of bandanas which old gentlemen will keep dangling from their pockets while pursuing their studies at print-shop windows. The evidence taken by the committee seems rather to show that the poacher's trade thrives best where there is what is called "a fair sprinkling" of ill-watched game, than where he has to encounter a staff of vigilant and well-trained keepers. But what though the case were otherwise? Suppose the existence of the temptation to be admitted, is it to be seriously argued that the province of legislation is not to prohibit offence, but to remove all temptation from the offenders? not to protect men in the enjoyment of their rights, but to abridge or annihilate those rights, that they may not be invaded by others? This, we affirm, is the principle when reduced to simple terms; and startling enough it is to those who have been accustomed to think that the proper tendency of laws and civilisation is in precisely the opposite direction. What although a breach of these laws may sometimes be the commencement of a course of crime, are there no other temptations which open the road to the hulks or the penitentiary? If the magistrates of our towns, who so vehemently denounce the danger of the game laws, are sincere in their search after the sources of crime, and in their efforts to repress them, we can help their inquiries—we can show them at their own doors, and swarming in every street, temptations to debauchery, which have made a hundred crimes for every one that can be traced to game laws,—and yet we cannot perceive that the zeal of our civic reformers has been very strenuously directed to discourage or to diminish the numbers of these dens of dissipation. We can refer them to the reports of our gaol chaplains for proof that three out of every four prisoners are ignorant of the simplest rudiments of education; and yet a praiseworthy attempt lately made in our metropolis to promote instruction by means of apprentice schools, was not favoured with the countenance of our chief magistrate, because he happened to be engaged in the more philanthropic duty of presiding at a meeting for condemning the game laws! If we are called upon to assign a reason for the frequency of poaching, we should attribute it neither to the mere superabundance of game by itself, nor yet to the pressure of poverty, but very much to the same sort of temptation that encourages the common thief to filch a watch or a handkerchief—namely, the facility of disposing of his spoil. Well-stocked covers may present opportunities to the poacher for turning his craft to account, but it is plain the practice would be comparatively rare if he did not know that at the bar of the next alehouse he can barter his sackful of booty either for beer or ready coin, and no questions asked. Every village of 1000 or 1500 inhabitants offers a market for his wares, and any surplus in the hands of the country dealer can be transferred in eighteen hours to the London poulterer's window. There cannot be a doubt that the consumption of game has increased enormously since the beginning of this century. It was formerly unknown at the tables of men of moderate means, except when haply it came as an occasional remembrance from some country relation, or grateful M.P. Now-a-days the spouse of any third-rate attorney or thriving tradesman would consider A very opposite result, we are persuaded, would follow from the adoption of Mr Bright's quack recipe for putting an end to the practice of poaching. By what indirect influence is the abolition of the game laws expected to produce this effect? If, indeed, along with the game laws, you sweep away also the law of common trespass—if you proclaim, in the nineteenth century, a return to the habits of the golden age, when, as Tibullus tells us—
and if you authorise the populace at large to traverse every park and enclosure, at all hours and seasons, and in any numbers and any manner they please, then we can understand that a few months probably of rustic riot and license may settle the question by the extermination of the whole game species. But we have not yet met any game-law reformer so rabid as to propose putting an end to the penalties on ordinary trespass; on the contrary, we find most of them, (Sir Harry Verney and Mr Pusey among the number,) We must now pass on to the considerations we have to offer on the situation of the tenant-farmer as to game; and the first question that suggests itself as to his case is this,—Whether the injury suffered by tenants be really so serious and extensive as is represented? "There is no denying," says Mr Shepherd, in his Essay, (p. 12,) "the notoriety of the fact that, in a great majority of instances, this excessive power of infringement on the property of the tenant through these laws has been abused. It has been almost universally abused." Is this true as regards either England or Scotland? or is it merely one of those vague and reckless affirmations which a man writing for a purpose, and not for truth, is so apt to hazard, in disregard or defiance of the facts before him? One thing we do find to be notorious—that the committee's evidence of game abuses in Scotland was limited to one solitary case, that of the estate of Wemyss. And although we may very readily conceive that, with more time and exertion, the agents of the league might have ferreted out other instances, we may, nevertheless, be allowed to express our astonishment that, on the slender foundation of this single case, Mr Bright should have ventured to ask his committee to find the general fact proved, that the prosperity of agriculture "in many parts of Scotland as well as England, is greatly impaired by the preservation of game." We learn at least to estimate the value of the honourable gentleman's judgment, and the amount of proof which an abolitionist regards as demonstration. But the truth is, that the case of Scotland was not examined at all; and the rejected report of Mr Bright and his associates bears on its face the most satisfactory evidence of their utter ignorance that the law on this side the Tweed is a perfectly different system from that of England. Will any believe that if our Scotch farmers, "in a great majority of instances," found their property sacrificed, they would not have universally joined in demanding the interference of the legislature? But what is the fact? An examination of the reports on petitions during the last two sessions shows that there certainly have been petitions against the game laws, but that for every one emanating from an agricultural body there have been ten from town-councils. We have better evidence, however, than mere inference, for the general distrust with which the farmers have regarded this agitation; for we find the Leaguers themselves, one and all of them, lamenting that their disinterested exertions on behalf of the tenantry have been viewed by that body with the But the question immediately before us is this: what remedy does the existing law of Scotland give a tenant in cases of real hardship from the preservation of game? In regard to this question, it is impossible to overlook the broad distinction between the cases of those who have expressly undertaken the burden of the game, and those whose leases contain no such covenant. The quasi-right of property in game recognised by the English law is, by Lord Althorpe's statute of 1832, vested in the occupier of land, when there is no express stipulation to the contrary. The reverse is virtually the case in Scotland—the landlord retains his right to kill game, unless he shall have agreed to surrender it to his tenant. In most cases, however, the landlord's right does not rest merely on the common law, but is expressly reserved to him in the lease. Now, when a tenant has deliberately become a party to such an express stipulation, and when the quantity of game (whether it be small or great) does not exceed, during the currency of the lease, what it was at his entry, on what conceivable plea of reason or justice can he ask the interference either of a court of law or of the legislature? To say, with Mr Bright and his coadjutors, that he seldom attends much to such minor articles in a lease—that he does not understand their effect—that in the competition for land he is glad to secure a farm on any conditions—all this is the But the tenant's case assumes a very different aspect when, by artificial means expressly contrived for the purpose, the game has been increased subsequent to his entry. Then, it is obvious, the burden is no longer the same which the tenant undertook. It is a state of things which he could not anticipate from the terms of his contract; and if the authority of the courts of law were unable to reach such a case, and to protect the tenant from what is in fact an infringement, on the part of the landlord, of their mutual agreement, it is difficult to imagine stronger grounds for insisting that the defect should be supplied by positive enactment. No such interference, however, is requisite. Our law courts not only possess the power of enforcing compensation for such injuries, but in the recent decision, in the case of Wemyss and Others v. Wilson, the supreme court has asserted and exercised that power in the most distinct and unqualified manner. "There is no instance," says Mr Chiene Shepherd, writing before the date of the above-mentioned judgment, "in which our head court in Scotland—the Court of Session—has ever given a decision entitling a tenant to damages from a landlord for destruction of his crops by game." Now, supposing the fact as here stated, to be strictly correct, what inference, we ask, can common candour draw from it? Are we to conclude that the law of Scotland, or the bench that administers it, are so corrupt as to countenance such an insult to justice? No such express decision had then been given, simply because no such claim had ever been tried; and surely this very fact is in itself the strongest possible presumption against the alleged universal abuse of the power of preserving game—a presumption that a hardship which, up to 1847, had never been made the ground of a formal appeal to the law tribunals, cannot be either very frequent or very severe. The statement, however, is not strictly correct; for, though no actual decree had been given on the special amount of damages before 1847, a very distinct, though incidental, opinion as to the liability of landlords in such cases was given in a case which occurred fifteen years ago—Drysdale v. Jameson. The principle of the law could not be more lucidly stated than in the words of the learned judge (Fullerton) on that occasion. "A tenant, in taking a farm, must be considered as taking it under the burden of supporting the game, and may be presumed to have satisfied himself of the extent of that burden, as he is understood to do of any other unfavourable circumstance impairing the productiveness of the farm. But, on the other hand, it would seem contrary to principle that the landlord, who is bound to warrant the beneficial possession to the tenant, should be allowed, by his own act, to aggravate the burden in any great degree. A tenant, in order to support such a claim, must prove not only a certain visible damage arising from game, but a certain visible increase of the game, and a consequent alteration of the circumstances contemplated in the contract, imputable to the landlord. The true ground of damage seems to be, not that the game is abundant, but that its abundance has been materially increased since the date of the lease." Surely so clear an opinion, coming from such a quarter, was a pretty plain indication of the protection which the law would extend to a tenant in these circumstances; and, accordingly, it has been completely confirmed on every point by the more recent and comprehensive decision on Captain Wemyss' case. Any new steps on the part of a landlord for stimulating the natural supply of game, whether by feeding them, breeding them artificially, or by a systematic destruction of the vermin which naturally prey on them, will be held as indicating an intention on his part to depart from the terms of the contract, and as If, then, there ever was any ground for alleging that the state of the law was indefinite, the objection is now removed. No one can pretend to doubt that a tenant of land in Scotland has as ample a protection against injury from game as the law can give him. To prevent the injury beforehand is beyond the power of any law. All that it can do is to afford him as prompt and effectual means of redress as it furnishes against any other species of injury. In short, when its principle is weighed fairly, and when we take into consideration the relief from the fiscal qualification which Mr Mackenzie's act of last session conferred on the farmers, we shall be able to estimate how far it is true that, "both in parliament and out of parliament, the interests and industry of tenants are systematically sacrificed to the maintenance of the odious privileges of more favoured classes." We have followed out and exposed, perhaps at greater length than was necessary, the stock sophisms and more flagrant exaggerations by which the total abolition of game laws is usually supported. Some points are yet untouched; but we prefer employing the rest of our paper in briefly stating a few suggestions for the removal of some of those difficulties and anomalies in the Scotch law, which we set out with acknowledging. In judging of any such alterations, it is necessary never to lose sight of the leading principle on which the whole Scotch system is founded—namely, the original and common right to seize and appropriate the animals of chase, qualified and determined by the previous right of the landowner to the exclusive use of the soil. 1st. Keeping this in view, our first change would be the abolition of the land-qualification introduced by the Act 1621; and this for the double reason that it was originally an unwarrantable departure from the general principle just mentioned, and that it is inexpedient to cumber the system with a law which is practically in desuetude. 2d. The effect of this alteration would be to remove also the useless and improper restriction on the sale of game. There can be no good reason for throwing difficulties in the way of the game-dealer's trade. As a check to poaching, we have abundant proof that the present restriction is inoperative; or, if it has any effect, it is directly the reverse of that intended, by throwing the trade very much into the hands of a low class of retailers. Instead of requiring a qualification or permission, which is constantly evaded, we would substitute a game-dealer's license, as in England. 3d. The fifth section of the Day Trespass Act empowers the person having the right to kill game on any lands, or any person authorised by him, to seize game in the possession of a trespasser. This provision has sometimes given occasion to dangerous conflicts between the parties, and is, moreover, quite at variance with the principle of the law above noted. 4th. The next particular we shall mention is of more importance. The evidence of Mr Bright's committee has, we think, fully disproved the charge against the county magistracy of England, of partiality and excessive severity in game cases. Exceptions no doubt were brought forward, but their paucity shows the contrary to be the rule. In Scotland there is still less ground for such an accusation. With us, such an occurrence as a justice adjudicating in his own case is unknown; and we find even the most violent of the abolition lecturers admitting that proceedings before the sessions under the game statutes are conducted with equity and leniency. But this is not enough. The parties who have to administer the law should be above all suspicion of bias or interest, even of the most indirect kind; and we should greatly prefer that game prosecutions were removed altogether, into the court of the judge-ordinary. Such an alteration, were a sure, would be regarded generally by the benches of county magistrates as a most desirable relief from one of the most invidious and embarrassing duties they have to execute. But, as the law stands, they have no option—for offences under the Day Trespass Act are cognisable by them only. If, then, there be any valid reason against transferring the trial of all game offences to the sheriff court, (and at present we can see none) it is at all events most advisable that his jurisdiction should be extended to day as well as to night trespasses. 5th. Any revisal of the law should embrace provisions against the accumulation of penalties; for although these are very rarely insisted on in Scotland, the power of enforcing them affords a pretext for declamations against the severity of the game law, which its opponents know well how to employ. Besides these modifications of the statutes, it seems most desirable that in all leases the disposal of game should be regulated by special clauses, which should include a reference to arbitration in case of dispute.
Compare these facts with the preposterous statements which the latest orator of the league, Mr M. Crichton, has been repeating to listening zanies at Greenock, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, that "the commitments arising from game laws amount to ONE-FOURTH of the whole crime of the country."
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