she would shoot him, and immediately the contents were discharged in his face; in consequence of which, one eye was lost, several teeth struck out, and his face was much lacerated.

Lord Ellenborough informed the jury, that they were to consider, first, whether the defendant had been guilty of negligence, in entrusting such an instrument to such an agent. With respect to the instrument, it was, in the first instance, a dangerous one, being loaded with types; and the question was, whether a reasonable and prudential precaution had been taken to render it innocent, before it had been entrusted to the care of the Mulatto servant.

The circumstance of taking out the priming did not render the instrument a harmless one; some priming having afterwards, probably, been shaken from the barrel, from which the charge had not been extracted, into the pan.

If, upon the whole, the jury were of opinion that the instrument, in such a state, ought not to have been trusted to such a person, the plaintiff would be entitled to their verdict. The jury gave a verdict for the plaintiff, damages 100l.-Dixon v. Bell, i Starkie, 287.

This was a verdict by the father, merely for the expenses he had incurred, and for the loss of the service of his son, which probably was of a trifling value. If an action had been brought by the boy himself, which might have been brought, then the jury, under the same evidence, might have been justified in giving him 1000l. or 5000l. damages, just as such a terrible personal injury could have been measured by a pecuniary compensation.

This ought to make all persons cautious in not keeping loaded guns in the house, or in not trusting

them loaded to the care of their servants.

If the boy had been killed by the Mulatto girl, she would have been guilty of manslaughter; and she might have been burnt in the hand, and might have been imprisoned one year besides.

This ought to be a warning to all young people, never to present at any one guns or fire-arms; it is a sport which frequently ends in misery and death, and which, as we have seen, is subject to severe but absolutely necessary animadversions in a court of justice.

СНАР.

CHAP. XVII.

ALTERATIONS SUGGESTED FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE GAME LAWS.

In the preceding Chapters I have fully proved, that, by the law of England, Game, or all wild animals, are the property of the occupier of the surface of the land upon which they are found and taken; and I trust I have also shewn, that the law of the land is conformable to the precepts of religion, and the principles of sound morality. When the right of property is established, the divine commandment, "Thou shalt not steal," equally applies to an animal that is wild, as to one that is tame.

Sir

In the preceding chapters, I have frequently said owner of the land. The Reader will understand that game always belongs to the owner, when he is the occupier; but it belongs to the tenant, when it is not reserved by the landlord.

Sir William Blackstone, and Mr. Paley who has followed him in the error, have done much harm to the Code of Moral Laws, and to the foundation of civil government, by advancing, that all property owes its origin only to the law of the land, or to positive institutions. This is a doctrine which is as dangerous as it is erroneous.

Sir William Blackstone has said, "that the permanent right of property, vested in the ancestor himself, was no natural, but merely a civil right." Vol. II. p. 11.

"And again, of forgery, theft, and offences of a lighter kind, we are here principally to speak; as these crimes are none of them offences against natural, but only against social rights; not even theft itself, unless it be accompanied with violence to one's house or person; all others being an infringement of that right of property, which, as we have formerly seen, owes its origin not to the law of nature, but merely to civil society.”— Vol. IV. p. 8.

To this I have added the following Note:-" It is strange that the learned Judge's conclusion, viz. that theft itself is not an offence against natural rights, did not lead him to suspect the fallacy of the position, that the right of property owes its origin

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origin not to the law of nature, but merely to civil society; which he has also advanced in a former volume (Vol. II. p. 11.), and which I have there presumed to controvert. If theft be not a violation of the law of nature and reason, it would follow, that there is no moral turpitude in dishonesty.

"Thou shalt not steal," is certainly one of the first precepts, both of nature and religion.

Mr. Paley, probably misled by the authority of the learned Judge, has also fallen into the most extraordinary conclusion, that "the real foundation of our right (to property) is THE LAW OF THE LAND."-Vol. I. p. 118.

And to draw the Reader's attention more particularly to this strange sentence, the last words are printed in large letters.

If Sir William Blackstone, Mr. Paley, Aristotle, Cicero, Puffendorf, and Grotius, had been placed together, with their families, upon an uninhabited island, surely they would have all have acknowledged, and would have enforced, the universal precept of suum cuique tribuere, before they had agreed amongst themselves upon any particular system of rules, which were to have constituted their law of the land.

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