shire, whom he so energetically harangued, will, if half he said to them is true, have small reason to be grateful to him. Is it Mr. Bright's object to preserve game more effectually? Will his Bill be entitled one "for the more effectual preservation of game?" His object must be one of two things-either to increase the efficacy of the present laws, or to sweep them away after the corn-laws. Mr. Bright is too bold a man to adopt a tricking middling course. If the first be his object, he will have deluded his intelligent audience in the most intelligent county of England (Bucks), and will lose his popularity with the poachers, and worse, the hares and pheasants they might send him; for poachers we know, from Sir Walter Scott's anecdote about the one he defended, are not ungrateful fellows. It must be their abolition he intends; and this because he believes the evil to be without a cure-because he thinks that game is the only property that cannot be protected by law. If game be the first species of property the legislature says it cannot protect, it will not be the only kind; it may be the first, but not the last-not the alpha and omega-it will be the beginning of the end. Once admit that a desperate, determined, continued crusade in crime will procure impunity, and at how many years' purchase could Mr. Bright sell his "mill" or "factory," whichever it is? Is the temptation to steal game great? Of course it is when the thief is regarded as a martyr; when his name is mentioned with applause in the House of Commons; when his laudlord or the committing magistrate is maligned and slandered on his account; when, to reach the climax of folly, a party presents the thief with a sum which to him is a fortune.

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Is the commission of the crime easy ? Not casier than to set fire to a mill, which I apprehend will be immediately done when the Duke of Buckingham takes it into his head to praise and pay incendiaries, as some praise and pay poachers. Now, we all know how demoralizing the factory system is-ruinous to the mind and body, &c.; really the Duke of Buckingham would have good arguments to justify retaliation. It is nonsense to talk of the temptation the poor are exposed to, and the facilities of poaching. Everybody, who knows the habits of game, is aware that all the tales one sees in the Sunday papers about honest ploughmen with hares in their pockets, which jumped in despite Hodge's resistance, and, as the phrase runs, a poor but honest" carter receiving a pheasant in his bosom which obligingly fell down dead as he passed under it, and of ruthless keepers pouncing on them just at the moment, dukes, the rev. magistrates, clerks, fines, fees, treadmill, &c., are absolutely false. Every one, acquainted with the dense stupidity of the peasantry, is aware that only long practice and the sharpness that vice engenders or acquires will enable them to kill a hare or pheasant. We have seen a Welsh peasant employed as a watcher on an extensive preserved estate, who did not know what a woodcock was when it sprang up before his nose, and yet he must have seen more woodcocks than soldiers or policemen in his life. Solitary poachers, with rare exceptions, never destroy game. Wires are their most fatal engines of destruction, but these are uncertain in operation, and easily detected. The temptation to poach, apart from the odd patronage it now receives, is not great; and it is, in fact, one of the crimes most difficult of commission. Netting partridges and killing pheasants are the only branches of poaching that pay; the latter is the most com

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mon; the first is absolutely unknown in many parts of the country, and never practised except by those "martyrs" who obtain their living in the country, but possess themselves a town residence. The greatest and the worst poachers are those who reside in the neighbourhood of our large manufacturing towns. Manchester is full of them. It was proved at the recent assizes, on a trial of some men for burglary, that three broke into the house early in the morning, whilst others breathed their greyhounds and amused themselves by coursing the hares returning from feed on a pleasant neighbouring brow, which, overlooking the scene of the more serious labours of their companions, they were able to watch and guard against any interruption-thus combining early hours and health with pleasure and profit.

"Most glorious night, thou wast not made for slumber!"

Some old women seem to suppose a spirit of wild adventure, the fierce delights of danger, hunting, &c., possesses poachers, and that therefore they should be pardoned-faugh! Such passions are felt by poachers in novels, and we know very strange things happen in novels; we see horses very often, yet we never hear horses scream with agony; but in all regular novels of the chivalrous age, horses scream in every chapter --so it is with poachers in novels, and poachers in real life; as often as the reader has heard a horse scream, so often as he seen a poacher who does it for the fun of the thing.

They do it for profit-pounds, shillings, and pence—and nothing else. -Pleasure forsooth!

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods," but not when cold, and wet, and weary, and hungry, and frightened, on a misty morning, with the rain drops clustering on the black thorns and the tangled briars, the startled blackbirds waking the woods around, the grinning dogs and resolute keepers in front, the cottage with the wife and children in the mind's eye, and sometimes murder and the gallows not remote. But even suppose pleasure is the motive to the crime, should this be an excuse? Are no other crimes committed for pleasure? If a brutal peasant knocks down a girl, and violates her person, is it an excuse that he did not expect money gain by the transaction? If Mr. Bright has read the German Trials for Remarkable Crimes, he would know that poisoning has been a source of pleasure to some, and that the eyes of a murderess have glistened with as wild delight at the sight of arsenic, as ever did the eye of a sportsman at the first woodcock of the season flushed, or the first fox that rings a "tallyho" from his lips. Game is considered much in the same light now that cattle was on the borders of England and Scotland in the reigns of Elizabeth and James. It was thought pardonable, if not laudable, to steal cows, sheep, and horses then. Did the Howards, Carys, and Hunsdons argue as Mr. Bright does now? Did they say, The evil is incurable; let us place the border property under ban and proscription"? Did they let rapine and licentiousness loose on the border? No: they hanged some gentle thieves, imprisoned others, whilst a few were roasted in their own houses; and this seasonable severity threw a shade on robbery; it was no longer thought a fit pursuit for a gentleman. And if this weeping and wailing over poachers were at an end; if sharp correction, not puling sympathy, were applied to them, the poor but honest, &c.," might deserve the whole of the

description. But we must be doing Mr. Bright injustice; he cannot intend to confiscate property-he who would suffer so much from anarchy; he means, doubtless, to make the game laws more efficient. But if his object be to abolish game, we will give him a hint to assist him. It has probably never occurred to him that to repeal the game laws alone will not achieve this. He must go further; he must abolish the law of trespass.

Is Mr. Bright prepared to do this? Are Messieurs the tenant farmers prepared to see gangs of the "poor but honest, &c.," marching in line, not alone over parks and through woods, but in the uncut wheat, and oats, and barley, and over clover and through beans and potatoes? We will suppose the game laws abolished. A man (one of the burglars before alluded to) who was tried for attempting a burglary last assizes, observed, when he was caught, that it was only a misdemeanor, not a felony; for it was only an attempt: his intended iniquity was not complete; still he thought it would be a curious point for the judge." The judge told the jury it was, under the circumstances, "a curious point;" but that he thought the prisoner was right in his view of the law. Such sharp fellows as this would soon find out that the extreme penalty for trespassing is only forty shillings each; so that, even if they are caught, and visited with the last rigour of the law, still it must be a poor game country that would not pay their legal expenses and leave them "where withal," as Mr. Grantley Berkeley neatly expresses it, to refresh themselves after a pleasant day's sport. But if you do not abolish the law of trespass, you must make it effectual that is, you must make it severe enough to counterbalance the temptation to pursue game; or, in other words, you must under a new name reimpose the game laws. It may be a consolation to be imprisoned for the same period under one statute instead of another. the acute gentleman who so nicely discriminated between felony and misdemeanor, the attempt to commit a burglary and the complete offence, it would doubtless be a point of some importance; but to the public, to those who have to prosecute them, to the wives and children of the criminals, to the parishes who have to support their families during their incarceration, it must be a matter of much indifference, certainly not worth the agitation it has cost. Unless the law of trespass is abolished, the repeal of the game laws will be in operative. Imagine Prince Albert looking forth from Windsor Castle, and seeing the "poor but honest, &c.," sweeping down his pheasants, and rolling over his hares in dozens; imagine his keepers sent to arrest them, returning with a brace of pounds a head, the law of the land empowering them to harry the covers of Cumberland Lodge for that small consideration! Doubtless, Mr. Bright's garden trampled down, and all the wheat and barley and oats in the country flat on the ground, would call for a severe law of trespass. Well, then we should have our old game law with a new name; and Mr. Bright would have had his labour and Mr. Berkeley shown his appreciation of crows to no purpose.

To

Let us return for a moment to the economical part of the question—the loss sustained in consequence of the existence of game. Who bears this loss? Not the tenant we have proved; unless, indeed, the tenant be a fool. The tenant calculates and offers less rent in consequence of having to feed the game. And here let me observe, in passing, that the

game is the tenant's, to the exclusion of the landlord, and that when the landlord acquires the game, he does so by private agreement, for which concession the tenant receives a compensation; or if he does not, he makes a foolish bargain. The landlord bears the whole expense of feeding the game; but even this is not much. Hares, probably, consume a good deal, but partridges scarcely anything; and pheasants cost more in keepers and watchers than in food, even though food be purchased for them. Pheasants and partridges feed on the grains that fall from the ears of corn when it is reaped. If excessive game preserving leads to poaching, the landowners suffer for it; the expense of supporting the families of imprisoned poachers comes out of the rates that are levied on the lands. We promised not to trouble the reader about feræ naturæ, &c. ; we will keep our promise; but one argument against game laws is, that a bird hatched here may feed there, and be killed ten miles off. This is not so. Those acquainted with game know that they live and die in the fields where they first saw the light. But even if such was not the case; if game were given to rambling, the average would be the same. If A killed a bird B fed, B would soon return the compliment to A. Again it is asked, "How can an ignorant man help killing a bird belonging to he knows not whom?" Possibly the ignorant man may not know whether a pheasant belongs to the Duke of Buckingham or Lord Orkney; but he knows to whom it does not belong-he knows it does not belong to him. Sheep and ponies run wild on the Welsh hills, but the peasantry are not in the habit of stealing them on that account. There were several letters in the Times from a Captain Forbes, who lives near Windsor, piteously complaining of the destruction caused to his crops by Prince Albert's pheasants. If Captain Forbes, instead of complaining to the Times, had sent a case to counsel, asking for advice on the subject, he would have seen that the remedy was easy, plain, and in his own hands; in short, the outcry against the game laws is caused partly by the ignorance that prevails on the subject, and partly by the bad advocacy of their supporters. Heaven help the question with such advocates!

We do not support those who preserve game to excess we think it wicked and foolish, unless game is more profitable to the breeder of it than the crops the land would bear would be. That it may be more profitable, many places besides Scotland prove. But in a rich grass or corn country, we always regret to see more than a fair sprinkling of If all that is said of Blenheim be true, the Duke of Marlborough* game. must lose considerably in the year by the destruction caused to the crops by game, and also by the poor rates which the numerous convictions for offences against the game laws must greatly increase. Still these are only moral sins: they cannot be touched by positive law, without causing worse evils than the law is designed to cure. We have a curiosity to see Mr. Bright's bill. If it be to abolish the game laws, it is utterly inconsistent with his past principles: if it be to alter, it

Since writing the above we have heard that the Duke of Marlborough has given permission to his tenants to kill hares, provided they do not use guns for the purpose. We have also read "The Anti-Game Law Prize Essay," by a Scotch Farmer and Master of Arts. If this essay gained a prize in a nation so dialectical as Scotland, the cause the writer advocates must indeed be bad. The few arguments it contains have been refuted in our article; the rest of the pamphlet is merely declamatory.

must be to make those laws more effectual; and if so, a pretty position he will occupy-the Champion of the Squires, and Betrayer of all the Buckinghamshire Chaw-Bacons ! We have a strong belief that Mr. Bright would be heartily glad if he could quietly drop the whole matter. We bid him heartily farewell, with the certainty that he must do one of two things-either abolish the laws and renounce his own principles, or make them more effectual and betray his followers; and whichever of these he elects, we apprehend his position will neither add to his happiness nor his legislative renown.

Having reached London at the end of October, it occurred to me that the late Duke of Queensbury must have made a mistake when he declared town to be fuller than the country at this season of the year. In his days, to be sure, sportsmen were rarer than now; country gentlemen composed the fields of the Pytchley and other crack countries, and left the Surrey to the once-a-week lawyers-clerks and cockneys. Now, everybody hunts. This is a most unmitigated nuisance-the greatest bore imaginable. I don't give in to the notion of its improving the character of the population at large, because it gives a peculiarly English tone to the legitimate followers of it. It gives a very bad tone to some; it leads to mighty airs and graces, and to incalculable debt and mischief, in a set of people who have no earthly business three miles beyond Temple Bar. They are up and down by the rail, neglecting their occupations, and passing themselves off to the barmaids on the road as mighty fine gentlemen. Talk of the difficulties of the country! Why, everybody has been living beyond their means; and I have a much higher estimation for a poor fellow residing in a little box with one horse, and hunting from his own home, than for any one of these foxbitten pretenders to sportsmanship, be their stud ever so long. Upon my arrival in town I found that a great number of these gentlemen had deserted the paths of their predecessors, the foggy avenues of Regentstreet, Pall Mall, Cockspur-street, and the Strand, and were gone (Heaven save the mark!) to hunt with the Baron-for a month or two with the Pytchley-a week with the Warwickshire--or to see Sir Richard Sutton. The world, the London October world, good men in their way, were imitating Consols, and falling daily. To be sure, I did see, through the mist of four o'clock, p.m., a solitary sub. on the steps of the United Service, and miserable enough he looked; about as happy as Sir Squeamish Bubble, who hobbled out of the Athenæum just as I