mice, and other vermin. The farmer is seldom permitted to make free use of the gun and the trap to rid himself of these pests of the farm, lest by any chance he should capture or alarm an animal sacred to the god of sport. Sometimes he is not allowed to keep dogs; if he is, his dogs, and his cats also, are trapped, and poisoned,―in fact, cats can scarcely be kept on estates that are strictly preserved. The farmer suffers still more from the destruction of those wild animals that nature provides to prevent the excessive and therefore injurious increase of other species; for game preservers, while they strive to augment the number of those animals that consume the crops of the farmer, are relentless in extirpating those that do him service. The weasel,' says Bewick in his History of Quadrupeds, 'is very useful to the farmer, and is much encouraged by him. During winter it frequents his barns, outhouses, and granaries; which it effectually clears of rats and mice. It is, indeed, a more deadly enemy to them than even the cat itself; for being more active and slender, it pursues them into their holes, and kills them after a short resistance. In summer, it ventures to a distance from its usual haunts; is frequently found by the side of waters, near corn-mills; and is almost sure to follow wherever a swarm of rats has taken possession of any place.' But as the weasel is also a foe to game, the gamekeepers wage incessant war upon him, with such consequences to the farmer as Mr. Mann experienced on his farm in Norfolk. The keepers having killed all the weasels upon it, the rats so increased that they must almost have equalled the numbers of that army which was sent to do judgment upon Bishop Hatto, who in the recklessness of power had destroyed the corn that might have fed a famishing people. I should think,' said Mr. Mann, speaking

of a particular wood, 'there are thousands of rats bred in that grove yearly, and in the plantations also.' A farmers' committee in Selkirkshire express their opinion that 'the preservation of ground game leads to poaching, and poaching to destruction of fences and injury to all crops. Preservation leads to destruction of grain in stackyards; cats and dogs being trapped, rats and mice abound. Crows being killed, wire-worms are abundant.' Wood pigeons,' says a Forfarshire farmer, 'have increased enormously of late years, and they as well as rooks do much damage;' and in Aberdeenshire, we are told, the farmers complain bitterly that they find their dogs and cats poisoned and trapped, and that in consequence their farmyards and stackyards are overrun with rats and other vermin.

In reading accounts such as these of the damage sustained by the agriculturist from the depredations of wild animals, we are reminded of the language of the prophet, 'That which the palmerworm hath left, hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left, hath the canker-worm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left, hath the caterpillar eaten.' Wire-worms assail the seed in the earth, ground game commence their ravages when it begins to sprout, birds devour it as it approaches maturity, and vermin again attack it when it is stowed in the stackyard and the barn. Much of this is inevitable. We know, as Virgil says,

Pater ipse colendi
Haud facilem esse viam voluit.

but that
additional difficulties
should be created, and fresh
obstacles placed in the way of the
national food producer, for the mere
purpose of affording sport to a com-
paratively small number of the com-
munity, would have been unjustifi-
able in any age or country, and is

altogether intolerable in a country like our own, with a population becoming every year more and more dependent upon foreign regions for its daily bread.

Those who defend the present Game Laws, as we have already observed, do not dare at the present day to base their defence of them on the supposed right of the proprietor of the soil to do what he pleases with his own. They shrink from asserting that a man is justified in turning corn land and meadow land into rabbit warrens and pheasant preserves, unless they can at the same time show that no loss of food is thereby occasioned to the community at large. It is for this reason that we have in this article confined our attention entirely to the economic side of the question; and, if we are not altogether mistaken, we have succeeded in demonstrating, both from the reason of the case and from the unimpeachable testimony of practical men, that no wild animal reared on cultivated land can ever be worth anything like the cost of its production, and that in some instances it is not worth one-tenth of what it costs. From the economic point of view, therefore, the argument in favour of the entire abrogation of all laws that place any restriction upon the agriculturist in dealing with the wild creatures that are to be met with upon the land he cultivates, is irresistible. Hares and rabbits are so destructive that all agriculturists are agreed that no limitation should be placed on the means employed for their destruction. Pheasants and partridges would not generally be too numerous, if they received the same protection that is now given during the breeding season to certain other wild birds; they should be treated, however, in exactly the same manner in all respects as rooks and pigeons, that is to say, they should receive protection where they are not so numerous as to be the cause

of serious mischief; that protection should be withdrawn at any time, or in any place, where they are found to be excessive. The circumstances of different districts are so various that this point should be left to the determination of some local authority.

Here, it is true, some persons may say, we admit that landed proprietors are not justified in foro conscientiae in diminishing the food supply of the country, for the purpose of affording sport to themselves and their friends; and that under special circumstances the Government might even interfere, and by means of appropriate legislation check any gross abuse of proprietary rights; yet we cannot admit that it is either desirable or justifiable to withhold altogether the protection of the law from any kind of property, whether it consists of domesticated or wild animals. To this we reply, the abolition of the Game Laws would not give to any person a right to go upon land without authority; it would only permit the farmer and his servants to take and destroy, in such manner as they pleased, the wild animals upon the land. Strictly speaking, there is not, and there cannot be, a right of property in

any one, even in the owner of the soil, over the feræ naturæ. Since they have never been appropriated by the labour and exertion of man, they still remain a portion of the original common stock, once free to all. All therefore have an equal right to seize and enjoy them, so long as they do not trespass on the land of another. This was the rule of the Roman or civil law, upon which the jurisprudence of modern Europe is chiefly founded. 'Therefore the wild beasts and birds, and all animals which are produced from the sea, the sky, and the earth, as soon as they are captured by any one, by the law of nations immediately became his. For what is not the property of anyone,

by natural reason belongs to the man who takes possession of it." Yet that law permitted no one to hunt or sport upon another's grounds, but by consent of the owner. 'Whoever enters the property of another for the purpose of hunting or taking birds (venandi aut aucupandi gratia), may be prohibited by the proprietor from entering.' Such also is the principle of the common law of England. Indeed, it cannot be denied,' says Blackstone, that by the law of nature every man, from the prince to the peasant, has an equal right of pursuing and taking to his own use all such creatures as are feræ naturâ, and therefore the property of nobody, but liable to be seized by the first occupant.' And in other places he says, 'It was not till after the irruption of the northern nations into the Roman empire that we read of any other prohibitions than that natural one, of not sporting on any private grounds without the owner's leave.' . . . All forest and game laws were introduced into Europe at the same time and by the same policy as gave birth to the feudal system.' 8 'From a similar principle to which, though the Forest Laws are now mitigated, and by degrees grown entirely obsolete, yet from this root has sprung a bastard slip, known by the name of the Game Laws, now arrived to and wantoning in its highest vigour; both founded upon the same unreasonable notions of permanent property in wild creatures, and both productive of the same tyranny to the commons; but with this difference, that the Forest Laws established only one mighty hunter throughout the land-the Game Laws have raised a little Nimrod in every manor.' Blackstone, indeed, held that since the introduction of the feudal system into

"Inst., 2, 1, 12.

England, the king by his prerogative possessed whatever qualified property can exist in animals fero natura. This doctrine has been controverted; but either upon it, or upon the more sound principle of the Roman and early English jurisprudence, we contend that Government is entitled to grant its protection to some wild creatures, and to withhold it from others, in such manner as appears best calculated to promote the public welfare.

It is sometimes alleged that if there were no Game Laws there would be so much poaching that more injury would be done to the fences and crops of the farmer by that means, than is now done by game; and sometimes it is said in the same breath that the abolition of those laws would cause game to become extinct; yet if there was no game, there would certainly be no poaching. As far as we can judge, the repeal of these laws would lead neither to an increase of trespass, nor to a cessation of sporting. We may with safety leave it to the farmer to prevent wild animals from becoming so numerous as to tempt the professional poacher, who can only make his trade answer when game exists in great quantities ready to his hand. With the extinction of the Game Laws, not game, but the poacher would probably become extinct; and if the birds now denominated game were placed under the Wild Birds' Protection Act, we believe there would still be enough found to afford recreation for all who prefer the exercise of real sport to the indolent cruelty of the battue. If the present tres pass law should prove to be inadequate to protect the fields of the agriculturist, the law must be amended; but we have never heard that in the neighbourhood of large towns, where cultivation is most garden-like, and

the population most dense, any complaint is made of the insufficiency of the present law to afford to the cultivators the protection they require; yet, since in those localities there is no game, it is not to the Game Laws they are indebted for the security they enjoy.

be

We cannot conclude without making some reference to the apprehensions so generally expressed both by the English and Scotch farmers, that any alteration of the Game Laws that did not give to the tenant what they call an inalienable right over the game, would be of little value. They feared that the proprietors, even after the abolition of the Game Laws, by means of stipulations in leases, and by verbal contracts where there was no written lease, might be able to retain as entire control over the game upon their farms as they have at present, unless the law should step in and declare all such contracts null and void. To many this would seem a very strong measure; and it may questioned whether in practice it would be found of much avail, when there is such intense competition among farmers for farms, and so strong a disposition among proprietors to retain possession of the game. It would be otherwise if the farmers, by means of a law of tenant right, were rendered less entirely dependent upon the proprietors than they are at present, There is a bill now before Parliament which would to a considerable extent effect this object; one clause, the twelfth, provides that the tenant shall not be competent to contract himself out of the operation of the Act. This raises the very same question that was so warmly debated in the House of Commons Committee on the Game Laws last session between the farmers who appeared as witnesses and the landlords who sat on the Committee. The interference of the Legislature between

landlord and tenant, whether in respect of compensation for improvements, or in relation to the preservation of game, can only be justified on the theory that the supreme dominion over the entire soil of the country is vested in the State, or in the Crown as the representative of the nation; and that all those who have any tenure of land hold it upon the implied condition that it is to be occupied, not for the sole advantage of the individual, but for the benefit of the whole commonwealth. Such, indeed, has always been the theory of the law of England, and it is only since the abolition of the feudal tenures at the time of the Restoration that it ceased to be something more than a theory. But it is not to be expected that this view should find much favour with Parliament as at present constituted.

It would therefore be desirable, we think, that the efforts of those who seek to abate this game nuisance should, in the first instance, be directed to the simple but entire repeal of the Game Laws, including the law which requires a licence for killing or selling game. The increase that would arise from the ten-shilling gun licence, if it conferred an unrestricted right of shooting, would probably prevent any loss to the revenue from the giving up of the other; there might still be a question whether there should not be an exemption from the tax for all those persons who use guns, not for sport, but for the purpose of destroying noxious animals. If, after some years' trial, it shall appear that the fears of the farmers have been realised, and the evil remains unabated, it will be time to consider what measures ought to be adopted to prevent the further continuance of the scandal that exists, when the food of the many is sacrificed to the amusement of a few.