Liverpool, from a conviction that the time was come when Catholic Emancipation ought to be conceded. Nevertheless, in 1827, he was found heading, in the House of Commons, a bitter opposition against Mr Canning, and protesting all the while that his refusal to serve under him was entirely grounded on the fact, that Mr Canning was known to be favourable to concessions. The unlimited denouncement of Parliamentary Reform with which the Duke of Wellington may be said to have broken up his administration, was explained, a few weeks afterwards, to be the opinion of the Duke of Wellington, not as a Peer of Parliament, but only of the Duke of Wellington as Minister of the Crown. In the debates upon the Game Bill, the Duke undertook to give the public the benefit of his honourable experience of foreign countries, by asserting that the authority of revolutionary France was the only European precedent for the course which we were pursuing. A singularity of the sort would not have been fatal, were it true. But, in point of fact, there exists no such uniformity of opposite legislation as is here assumed. If it were intended to apply the observation to the sale of game, we are not aware that this is any where prohibited. Even in times when the privilege of the chase was most strictly royal and seignorial in France, game was sold just like other fowl. It used to be taken generally in nets, as being more saleable when so taken. It may be admitted that the Crown in most feudal monarchies subjected the right of sporting, when exercised by a simple proprietor even on his own soil, to the necessity of a license, or some other qualification. This was the case certainly in France and Holland. It was introduced by the Norman conquerors into Sicily and the South of Italy. Nevertheless, in the Considerazioni sopra la storia di Sicilia, Gregorio gives the diploma whereby King Roger granted the citizens the liberty of hunting and fishing on their farms; and the Norman Barons were made to swear to the Emperor Lothario that they would give similar rights to the citizens of Beneventum. The inhabitants of the towns in those days, it is clear, were not meant to be excluded on the continent, more than the citizens of London. The privilege of free chase occurs in most of the earlier charters of the city of London, and the liberty of hunting over Middlesex is said to have been frequently confirmed to them. This ought to be understood, probably, of immunities similar to that which all the free tenants of the county of Middlesex acquired under the charter by which the warren of Staines was unwarrened. The interest which the citizens had in this question, has conferred upon this document the dignity of being entitled the fifth charter of Henry III. to the city of London. The change of fashions has since turned

the city officer called the "Common Hunt," into a master of the ceremonies to the Lady Mayoress.

However magnificent and universal may have been the language of silvan prerogative on the continent, it was a right which even absolute monarchs could not practically enforce. Fabian mentions in his Chronicle, that Louis XI., imme'diately on being crowned, by consent of his council, made a law, that no man, of what degree that he were, should use hunting or hawking without speciall license, and specially for 'chasing or hunting of wolvys, nor to keep with him any houndys, ' or other instruments whereby the game might be destroyed.' It would have been as well if he had gone on to mention that this innovation, however, was a principal cause of the conspiracy raised against him by the princes of the kingdom. There is nothing encouraging in the example of ancient France on this point, even when we give it credit for the modifications which from time to time its government introduced. By an ordinance as far back as 1355, King John put a stop to the increase of warrens, that is of preserves, as injurious to agriculture. In 1396 Charles VI. professed to restrain the right of sporting to the nobles: yet he had the discretion to insert amid the mandates of barbarous feudalism, exceptions much wiser than the spirit of our qualification acts long afterwards allowed. De laquelle prohibition etoient exceptès les bourgeois vivans de leurs possessions et rentes. Notwithstanding these mitigations, the eagerness with which the National Assembly, in 1791, united in the proscription of the former offensive system, is a convincing proof that the amount of hostile feeling which it had provoked, was much beyond the apparent importance of the privilege itself. Poaching has not been done away with certainly by the change of the law in France. But all parties are perfectly satisfied with the actual regulations; the effect of which, in spite of considerable inconsistency, both in the language and in the remedy, is to make the interest in the game an incident to the ownership of the soil. Even in case the Duke of Wellington had not hunted long enough in Spain to have learned its provisions concerning the chase, he might, as a grandee of that kingdom, have been expected to know, that in that country, which was never suspected of revolutionary propensities, this part of its law is more popular than our own will become even under the present bill. • Wild 'beasts, &c., are the property of him who takes them; and they • can be taken not only on one's own property, but on that of ' another unless the owner forbid the entry thereon.'-Institutes of Spain, 99. This is the same limitation, which, according to

Heineccius, the good sense of Germany has also put upon the rude maxim of the civil law. Not a word here of qualification; nor of the confusion which has long pervaded the English law, owing to Bracton's unexplained exceptions of nisi consuetudo aut privilegium se habeat in contrarium. But the Duke need have travelled no further than to Scotland for the actual existence of the old common law principle, the restoration of which seemed such a novelty to his Grace. The right of hunting, 'fowling, and fishing within one's own ground, naturally arises 'from the property in the lands.' (Erskine's Institute.) He will find there no nonsense about franchise or lords of manors; whilst the only subsisting qualification, (that of 1621,) is comparatively nugatory and forgotten. The truth is, that the usage on this subject varies according to the state of cultivation and of society, whatever may be the law. If the law is to represent the wants of mankind, and to be obeyed, it must attend to these circumstances. To perceive the folly of supposing that one practice and one rule must be equally applicable to all countries, we need only look at contemporary periods, as contained in the history, past or present, of our own three kingdoms. The connexion between property in the soil, and property in the game which is upon it, is so reasonable a rule that it ought to be adopted by the law, long before a liberal proprietor will be likely in an ordinary case to stand strictly upon his right. The respective conditions of England, Scotland, and Ireland, have strong marks of the several progressive stages, through which, in reference probably to the creation, but certainly to the enforcement of this right, improving countries must almost necessarily pass. Game is one of the few matters of quarrel and misgovernment which has never been an Irish grievance. The Scotch cases of 1809 show to how late a day important points were left unraised in Scotland; and consequently within how recent a period the rule of the Scotch law came to be investigated and applied.

The

Legislation, when it does its best, can only offer a people the effectual means of promoting their happiness. Whether they will avail themselves of the means, must, after all, depend upon themselves. This is particularly the case with measures like the present, and like that of Parliamentary Reform. state of the former laws on both subjects was long left so scandalously defective, that the temptations to infringement and to vice were more than the average degree of human virtue could be expected to resist. However intelligible, and, to a certain extent, however excusable may be this result, the consequences to public morality have not been the less mischievous. A serious inroad has been made on that respectful feeling towards the

law, which, as it is the soundest symptom, so is it one of the most ennobling characteristics that a nation can possess. The effect of inveterate prejudices and habits are not capable of being repealed at a word. Yet every class of the community ought to be made aware that the amended state of the law will leave them without excuse for a continuance in their former practices. It is only in proportion as they shall be prepared accordingly to put their conduct in harmony with the law, when it is thus amended, that the country can, in either case, reap the benefit of an improved system, however good.

Parliamentary Reform promises to arm us as effectually against the jobber and the corruptionist, as the reform in our game laws arms us against the out-of-doors poacher. In case it ultimately fails in its great object, that of supplying their place with public-spirited men, we shall only have ourselves to blame. So, in the present instance, the machinery put into our hands, properly managed, will enable us to drive the poacher out of the field. But honest men must combine in order to give the experiment its due chance of success. The object is of sufficient importance to demand, on the part of every member of society, the most faithful observance of the part which his station assigns to him in the necessary arrangements. If the poor are to respect the law, the rich must set them the example, and every violation of it must be enforced against all alike. If a sentiment of honour cannot be created in every gentleman on this subject, it should be considered by his neighbours as a question not of private compliment or interest, but as one of public prosperity and peace. The penalties are to go to the county rate. The certificates in every county ought to be learned off by heart by the collectors of taxes, and the penalty by way of surcharge should be most rigidly watched for and exacted by them. This principle of considering that collectors of taxes and excise officers are informers retained on the part of the public, should be carried into execution throughout, wherever a penalty is leviable under the act. We have heard very lately at Leeds, of poulterers, against whom their honester brethren did not venture to inform; yet their partridges were all netted, and their pheasants shot by an air-gun. There should be no distinction whether it is the case of sportsman, poulterer, or consumer-of the individual who kills, who sells, or who buys the game. By degrees a proper public feeling may be created. When that is the case, it will do away with the demand for extraordinary vigilance and official superintendence. After the melancholy importance which the subject has acquired, nobody can be ignorant of the evils which he wantonly and cruelly encour

ages by participating in, or inducing a violation of the law. Now that game can be brought to market legally and honestly, no mercy should be shown to offenders in any stage of the offence. The public ought to agree to denounce, expose, and punish, such reckless indifference or selfishness, wherever it may exist. Not to do so, is to be an accessary to the mischief, and almost to the immorality. A vigorous prosecution of crimes apparently much more serious, is not half so important at this moment.

There are other subordinate and auxiliary arrangements besides, and beyond the possible provision of the law. Whilst they are indispensable to the complete success of the present plan, we are necessarily entirely dependent on the good nature and enlightened self-interest of the principal landed proprietors for their adoption. As a question of policy, it is most desirable that the landlord should let the tenant into a kind of partnership in the game, in order to identify the interest of landlord and tenant on this, as on every other subject connected with the management of a farm. We are aware it must take a little time to accustom squires to the sight of a gun in the hands of a farmer, and still longer to keep their nerves quiet when they hear it popping in an adjoining stubble. But, by the end of the season, Mr Littleton and Sir Robert Wilmot will be no losers when they and their narrower-minded neighbours compare even their respective heads of game. But surely good neighbourhood and kind feeling ought to count for something. This concession will turn the farmer (the great sufferer by, and consequently principal destroyer of, supernumerary game at present) into the best of all preservers. The village poacher will find him a more active garde champêtre than any keeper. But the secret and formidable combinations which by their numbers resist, and by their common purse make light of the terrors of the law, can be only put down by taking the market out of their hands, and by transferring it to that of the landed proprietors, to whom it properly belongs. For this purpose, the very ally we want volunteers his services. The poulterer is the natural middle man between the game producer and the consumer. The experience of the last thirty years has proved beyond all controversy that game is a species of goods which, in the actual state of society, will find its way into the market. Squires may lament the fact; but so it is. Hitherto the law has compelled the poulterer to be the receiver of stolen goods. This is now no longer made necessary by law. We hope the raisers of game will not make it necessary in fact. To obviate this disgraceful necessity, (and it is a scandal, of which the poulterers

VOL. LIV. NO. CVIII.

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