IV.: Aristocratic Game-laws.

A salmon from the pool, a wand from the wood, and a deer from the hills, are thefts which no man was ever ashamed to own.

We learn from this old Gaelic apophthegm,—the sentiment is very ancient,—that an exclusive right to game and other feræ naturæ does not rest on the same basis as property. Mankind will not be easily convinced that stealing a hare or partridge is as criminal as stealing a man’s purse. While this continues the popular feeling, it is vain to multiply acts for the preservation of game. Laws, to be efficacious, should be in accordance with public opinion; if not, they only disturb the peace of society, excite ill-blood and contention, and multiply instead of diminishing offences.

Since the preceding edition of this work was printed in 1831, the legislature, by the Game Act of last session, has torn out one of the leaves of The Black Book: we then declared that, for this single object—that of getting rid of the demoralizing, detestable, ferocious, and preposterous game code; we said “for this one object alone, without adverting to the church, the rotten boroughs, the dead weight, or other national grievance; only to sweep away this one national stigma would be well worth the three days’ fight of the Parisians, or even the four days’ battle of the Belgians.” Our declarations may have hastened the abatement of one of the most insolent oppressions ever exercised over a civilized people, and accelerated the introduction of the new measure by which qualifications to kill game are abolished, and game is allowed to be sold like other commodities, by taking out a license. These concessions have removed the chief objects of our former animadversion, and, therefore, what we have to say will be rather for the benefit of the next than of the present generation; our purpose will be to place on record a specimen of the revolting tyranny exercised over the people of England by an usurping Oligarchy even to the last days of its existence.

Be it known then that the Boroughmongers, down to the twelfth hour of their reign, persisted in claiming for game greater protection than had ever been awarded to property; they persisted in having it considered as something more inviolate and sacred than household goods; they arbitrarily fixed on certain fowls of the air and beasts of the field, and these, in their sovereign pleasure, they decreed should be endowed with peculiar privileges distinct from all others; in a word, that they should be aristocrats like themselves, and it should be highly criminal in any base-born man to kill them, or eat them, or buy them, or sell them, or carry them, or even to have them in his possession, or to have in his possession any engine or instrument by which the dear and favoured creatures might be slain, maimed, or injured. In pursuance of these lordly whims they framed a code of laws to which we will venture to say, in subtlety and refinement of insult, nothing equal could be found in the records of the vilest despotism ever established to experiment on the limits of human endurance; we will venture to say that, in no other country in the world, with the least pretence to freedom and civilization, was there to be found a body of laws so partial, so repugnant to the common sense and subversive of the common rights of mankind, as the game laws of the English aristocracy!

To enforce their haughty immunities the Boroughmongers fixed on certain fantastic conceits, which they called qualifications to kill game. These qualifications were not founded on any rational consideration of wealth, intelligence, or social usefulness. A rich merchant or manufacturer had no right to kill game; his warehouses might be filled with valuable merchandize; he might give employment to thousands of people, as some of them do in the North, yet he had no privilege to meddle with the aristocrats of the air nor of the field! His wealth was base—it was not feudal, it had not been acquired by war, plunder, and confiscation, and did not qualify to spring woodcocks, no, nor even to pop at a snipe, nor a teal, nor a quail, nor a land-rail. A parson, however, who had a living worth £150 per annum, though his estate was only for life, might kill as much game as he pleased.

But the sages of the King’s Bench (blessed be their names!) were more indulgent than the boroughmongering parliament: they determined that even plebeians should have a little sport, and accordingly ruled that a qualified person might take out a tradesman, stock-broker, clothier, attorney, surgeon, or other inferior person to beat the bushes, and see a hare killed, and he should not be liable to penalty. But beware of the man-traps and spring-guns of the law; if any of the aforesaid ignoble beings ventured to meddle, without first being invited by a lord or gentleman so to do, he was fined, or else imprisoned in the House of Correction. Ah, these boroughmongers, how they have stabbed us! how they have kicked us! how they have laughed at us!

Although an unqualified man was not allowed to kill game, it might be thought, by a rational mind, he would be permitted to buy it of those who were. No, he was not. What, the lords of the soil become dealers and chapmen! degrade grouse and black-cock into mere commodities of traffic, like broad cloth and calico! Impossible! Therefore they passed laws that game should neither be bought nor sold; that higglers, victuallers, poulterers, pastry-cooks, and other mean persons should not carry it, nor have it in possession, nor should any unqualified person have in his possession any deadly or dangerous weapon for its injury or destruction. If an unqualified person were suspected—barely suspected, mind—of having game, or any dog, gun, or snare for killing or wounding it, his house might be searched, and if any net or snare, pheasant, partridge, fish, fowl, or other game were found, the offender might be forthwith carried before a justice and fined, or sent to the House of Correction, and there whipped and kept to hard labour. If a man only happened to spoil or tread on the egg of a partridge, pheasant, mallard, teal, bittern, or heron, he was fined or imprisoned. But if he went forth in the night for the third time, with the full intent of catching an aristocrat bird, a coney, or other game, he was transported beyond the seas for seven years, or imprisoned, and kept to hard labour, in the House of Correction for two years; and if he ran away in order to avoid this merciful infliction, or resisted the land-owner or his servants, either with club, stick, or stone, rather than be apprehended, he was guilty of a misdemeanour, subjecting him either to transportation or imprisonment.

Now, mark the commentary afforded by the Nimrods themselves on these arrogant and savage enactments. Within very few years three parliamentary committees were appointed to inquire into the state and administration of the game-laws; the results of their inquiries were—that poaching could not be prevented—that buying and selling game could not be prevented—that the game-laws were the fruitful sources of crime and immorality, and filled the gaols with delinquents, and that the only means of remedying the evils were by allowing game to be openly sold like other commodities, and by altering the qualifications, so that every owner of land might not only have the liberty to kill game on his own estate, but be empowered to grant a similar indulgence to any other individual. Instead of acting on the knowledge so communicated, or the suggestions recommended; instead of repealing the laws which were the sole cause of game being so highly prized, and of the deadly nocturnal encounters between keepers and poachers; instead of doing any of these, the only measures that were carried—and which, by the by, still remain in force—were the 7 & 8 Geo. IV. c. 29, and the 9 Geo. IV. c. 69, which greatly augmented the sanguinary character of a code already too ferocious, and the everlasting opprobrium of the misnamed free and enlightened community by which it was tolerated.

But observe what was disclosed respecting the sale of game, about which the descendants of the Normans appeared so extremely fastidious. From the inquiries of the committee of the House of Lords, in 1828, it was discovered that game was a regular article for sale in all the principal markets of the metropolis: the penalties, indeed, which were imposed on the traffic were easily evaded; since, by one sapient and moral act of our legislators, the 58 Geo. III. if a person, who had incurred them to any amount, would only inform of some other person who had bought or sold game within the preceding six months, his penalties were remitted and he received the informer’s reward, for this neighbourly, and, as it was often practised, friendly treachery. One salesman sold, on the average, 500 head of game in a week; in one year he sold 9628 head of game. The sale was mostly on commission, at two-pence or three-pence a head. It naturally excited surprise how all these waggon loads of game could be conveyed to London, and by whom supplied. The poor labourer, mason, or weaver, who perilled his life, his limbs, and his health, in the covert attempt to catch a hare or partridge, could not possibly be adequate to support a commerce like this. No, it was not done by poaching exactly; the wholesale dealers were the law-makers themselves—those who had interdicted the traffic—noble lords and men of title, who had condescended to supply the London poulterers and salesmen with game, on commission, as a means of augmenting their territorial revenues.

This perhaps is enough by way of record of the proceedings of the boroughmongers and their game laws, which Mr. Justice Blackstone denominated a “bastard slip of the forest laws.” But the fact is, they were a refinement in insult on the savage code of William Rufus. The territorial jurisdiction of the forest-laws, though extensive enough in all conscience, had its local boundaries; at least, it did not extinguish the old common-law right every proprietor exercised to kill and have all animals, feræ naturæ, found on his own land. These inroads on the most obvious rights of property and the common sense of mankind, were left for a much more recent period,—a period subsequent to the glorious Revolution of 1688: for, though the Qualification Act was passed in the reign of Charles II. the statutes which first made it penal to sell game, or for an unqualified person to have game in his possession, were not passed till the reigns of William III. and George II.