The next alteration which we would propose is that game should be made property; that is, that every man should have a right to the game found upon his land-and that the violation of it should be punished as poaching now is, by pecuniary penalties, and summary conviction before magistrates. This change in the game laws would be an additional desence of game: for the landed proprietor has now no other remedy against the qualified intruder upon his game, than an action at law for a trespass on the land; and if the trespasser has received no notice, this can hardly be called any remedy at all. It is now no uncommon practice for persons who have the exterior, and perhaps the fortunes of gentlemen, as they are travelling from place to place, to shoot over manors where they have no property, and from which, as strangers, they cannot have been warned. In such case (which, we repeat again, is by no means one of rare occurrence), it would, under the reformed system, be no more difficult for the lord of the soil to protect his game, than it would be to protect his geese and ducks. But though game should be considered as property it should still be considered as the lowest species of pro

land After all, it is only common justice, that he whose property is surrounded on every side by a preserver of game, whose corn and turnips are demolished by animals preserved for the amusement of his neighbour, should himself be entitled to that share of game which plunders upon his land. The complaint which the landed grandee makes is this. "Here is a man who has only a twenty-fourth part of the land, and he expects a twenty-fourth part of the game. He is so captious and litigious, that he will not be contented to supply his share of the food without requiring his share of what the food produces. I want a neighbour who has talents only for suffering, not one who evinces such a fatal disposition for enjoying." Upon such principles as these, many of the game laws have been constructed, and are preserved. The interference of a very small property with a very large one; the critical position of one or two fields, is a very serious source of vexation on many other occasions besides those of game. He who possesses a field in the middle of my premises, may build so as to obstruct my view; and may present to me the hinder parts of a barn, instead of one of the finest landscapes in nature. Nay, he may turn his fields into tea-perty-because it is in its nature more vague gardens, and destroy my privacy by the introduction of every species of vulgar company. The legislature, in all these instances, has provided no remedy for the inconveniences which a small property, by such intermixture, may inflict upon a large one, but has secured the same rights to unequal proportions. It is very difficult to conceive why these equitable principles are to be violated in the case of game alone.

Our securities against that rabble of sportsmen which the abolition of qualifications might be supposed to produce, are, the consent of the owner of the soil as an indispensable preliminary, guarded by heavy penalties-and the price of a certificate, rendered, perhaps, greater than it is at present. It is impossible to conceive why the owner of the soil, if the right of game is secured to him, has not a right to sell, or grant the right of killing it to whom he pleases-just as much as he has the power of appointing whom he pleases to kill his ducks, pigeons and chickens. The danger of making the poor idle is a mere pretence. It is monopoly calling in the aid of hypocrisy, and tyranny veiling itself in the garb of philosophical humanity. A poor man goes to wakes, fairs and horse-races, without pain and penalty; a little shopkeeper, when his work is over, may go to a bullbait, or to the cock-pit; but the idea of his pursuing an hare, even with the consent of the landowner, fills the Bucolic senator with the most lively apprehensions of relaxed industry and ruinous dissipation. The truth is, if a poor man does not offend against morals or religion, and supports himself and his family without assistance, the law has nothing to do with his amusements. The real barriers against increase of sportsmen (if the proposed alteration were admitted), are, as we have before said, the prohibition of the landowner; the tax to the state for a certificate; the necessity of labouring for support. Whoever violates none of these rights, and neglects none of these duties in his sporting, sports without crime; and to punish him would be gross and scandalous ty

ranny

and mutable than any other species of property, and because depredations upon it are carried on at a distance from the dwelling, and without personal alarm to the proprietors. It would be very easy to increase the penalties, in proportion to the number of offences committed by the same individual.

The punishments which country gentlemen expect by making game property, are the punishments affixed to offences of a much higher order: but country gentlemen must not be allowed to legislate exclusively on this, more than on any other subject. The very mention of hares and partridges in the country, too often puts an end to common humanity and common sense. Game must be protected; but protected without violating those principles of justice, and that adaptation of punishment to crime, which (incredible as it may appear), are of infinitely greater importance than the amusements of country gentlemen.

We come now to the sale of game.-The foundation on which the propriety of allowing this partly rests, is the impossibility of preventing it. There exists, and has sprung up since the game laws, an enormous mass of wealth, which has nothing to do with land. Do the country gentlemen imagine that it is in the power of human laws to deprive the three per cents of pheasants? That there is upon earth, air, or sea, a single flavour (cost what crime it may to procure it), that mercantile opulence will not procure? Increase the difficulty, and you enlist vanity on the side of luxury; and make that be sought for as a display of wealth, which was before valued only for the gratification of appetite. The law may multiply penal ties by reams. Squires may fret and justices commit, and gamekeepers and poachers continue their nocturnal wars. There must be game on Lord Mayor's day, do what you will. You may multiply the crimes by which it is procured; but nothing can arrest its inevitable progress, from the wood of the esquire to the spit

first of our company that this law is inflicted on, that there shall not one gentleman's seat in our country escape the rage of fire. We are nine in number, and we will burn every gentleman's house of note. The first that impeaches shall be shot. We have sworn not to impeach. You may think it a threat, but they will find it reality. The game-laws were too severe before. The Lord of all men sent these animals for the peasants as well as for the prince. God will not let his people be oppressed. He will assist us in our undertaking, and we will execute it with caution.""-Bath Paper.

of the citizen. The late law for preventing the sale of game produced some little temporary difficulty in London at the beginning of the season. The poulterers were alarmed, and came to some resolutions. But the alarm soon began to subside and the difficulties to vanish. In another season, the law will be entirely nugatory and forgotten. The experiment was tried of increased severity, and a law passed to punish poachers with transportation who were caught poaching in the night time with arms. What has the consequence been?-Not a cessation of poaching, but a succession of village guerillas; an internecive war between the gamekeepers and marauders of game:-the whole country flung into brawls and convulsions, for the unjust and exorbitant pleasures of country gentlemen. The poacher hardly believes he is doing any wrong in taking partridges and pheasants. He would admit the justice of being transported for Stealing sheep; and his courage in such a transaction would be impaired by a consciousness he was doing wrong: but he has no such feeling in taking game; and the preposterous punishment of transportation makes him desperate, and not timid. Single poachers are gathered into large companies, for their mutual protec-tect the game from nightly depredators. Immetion; and go out, not only with the intention of taking game, but of defending what they take with their lives. Such feelings soon produce a rivalry of personal courage, and a thirst of revenge between the villagers and the agents of power. We extract the following passages on this subject from the Three Letters on the Game Laws.

"The first and most palpable effect has naturally been, an exaltation of all the savage and desperate features in the poacher's character. The war between him and the gamekeeper has necessarily become a 'bellum internecivum. A marauder may hesitate perhaps at killing his fellow man, when the alternative is only six months' imprisonment in the county jail; but when the alternative is to overcome the keeper, or to be torn from his family and connections, and sent to hard labour at the antipodes, we cannot be much surprised that murders and midnight combats have considerably increased this season; or that information, such as the following, has frequently enriched the columns of the country newspapers."

"DEATH OF A POACHER.-On the evening of Saturday se'ennight, about eight or nine o'clock, a body of poachers, seven in number, assembled by mutual agreement on the estate of the Hon. John Dutton at Sherborne, Gloucestershire, for the purpose of taking hares and other game. With the assistance of two dogs, and some nets and snares which they brought with them, they had succeeded in catching nine hares, and were carrying them away, when they were discovered by the gamekeeper and seven others who were engaged with him in patroling the different covers, in order to pro

diately on perceiving the poachers, the keeper summoned them in a civil and peaceable manner to give up their names, the dogs, implements, &c. they had with them, and the game they had taken; at the same time assuring them, that his party had firearms (which were produced for the purpose of convincing and alarming them), and representing to them the folly of resistance, as, in the event of an affray, they must inevitably be overpowered by supe rior numbers, even without firearms, which they were determined not to resort to unless compelled in self-defence. Notwithstanding this remonstrance of the keeper, the men unanimous. ly refused to give up on any terms, declaring, that if they were followed, they would give them "a brush," and would repel force by force. The poachers then directly took off their great coats, threw them down with the game, &c. behind them, and approached the keepers in an attitude of attack. A smart contest instantly ensued, both parties using only the sticks or bludgeons they carried: and such was the confusion during the battle, that some of the keepers were "POACHING.-Richard Barnett was on Tues- occasionally struck by their own comrades day convicted before T. Clutterbuck, Esq., of in mistake for their opponents. After they keeping and using engines or wires for the de- had fought in this manner about eight or ten struction of game in the parish of Dunkerton, minutes, one of the poachers named Robert and fined 51. He was taken into custody by C. Simmons, received a violent blow upon his left Coates, keeper to Sir Charles Bamfylde, Bart., temple, which felled him to the ground, where who found upon him seventeen wire-snares. he lay, crying out murder, and asking for mer The new act that has just passed against these cy. The keepers very humanely desired that illegal practices, seems only to have irritated all violence might cease on both sides: upon the offenders, and made them more daring and which three of the poachers took to flight and desperate. The following is a copy of an anony-escaped, and the remaining three, together with mous circular letter, which has been received by several magistrates, and other eminent characters in this neighbourhood.

"TAKE NOTICE. We have lately heard and seen that there is an act passed, and whatever poacher is caught destroying the game, is to be transported for seven years.-This is English liberty!

"Now, we do swear to each other, that the VOL. I.

Simmons, were secured by the keepers. Simmons, by the assistance of the other men, walked to the keeper's house, where he was placed in a chair: but he soon after died. His death was no doubt caused by the pressure of blood upon the brain, occasioned by the rupture of a vessel from the blow he had received. The three poachers who had been taken were committed to Northleach prison. The inquest upon the

sale and purchase of this savoury bird prohibited, the same enjoyments would have been procured by the crimes and convictions of the poor; and the periodical gluttony of Michaelmas have been rendered as guilty and criminal, as it is indigestible and unwholesome. Upon this subject we shall quote a passage from the very sensible and spirited letters before us

body of Simmons was taken on Monday, before | stolen poultry is rarely offered to sale;—at least, W. Trigge, Gent., Coroner; and the above ac- nobody pretends that the shops of poulterers and count is extracted from the evidence given upon the tables of moneyed gentlemen are supplied that occasion. The poachers were all armed by these means. Out of one hundred geese that with bludgeons, except the deceased, who had are consumed at Michaelmas, ninety-nine come provided himself with the thick part of a flail, into the jaws of the consumer by honest means; made of firm knotted crabtree, and pointed at-and yet, if it had pleased the country gentlethe extremity, in order to thrust with, if occa- men to have goose laws as well as game laws; sion required. The deceased was an athletic-if goose-keepers had been appointed, and the muscular man, very active, and about twentyeight years of age. He resided at Bowle, in Oxfordshire, and has left a wife but no child. The three prisoners were heard in evidence; and all concurred in stating that the keepers were in no way blameable, and attributed their disaster to their own indiscretion and imprudence. Several of the keepers' party were so much beat as to be now confined to their beds. The two parties are said to be total strangers to each other, consequently no malice prepense could have existed between them; and as it appeared to the jury, after a most minute and deliberate investigation, that the confusion during the affray was so great, that the deceased was as likely to be struck by one of his own party as by the keepers', they returned a verdict of Manslaughter against some person or persons unknown.'

"In favourable situations, game would be reared and preserved for the express purpose of regularly supplying the market in fair and open competition; which would so reduce its price, that I see no reason why a partridge should be dearer than a rabbit, or a hare and pheasant than a duck or goose. This is about the proportion of price which the animals bear to each other in France, where game can be legally sold, and is regularly brought to market; and where, by the way, game is as plentiful as in any cultivated country in Europe. The price so reduced would never be enough to compensate the risk and penalties of the unlawful poacher, who must therefore be driven out of the market. Doubtless, the great poulterers of London and the commercial towns, who are the principal instigators of poach

"Wretched as the first of these productions is, I think it can scarcely be denied, that both its spirit and its probable consequences are wholly to be ascribed to the exasperation naturally consequent upon the severe enactment just alluded to. And the last case is at least a strong proof that severity of enactment is quite inade-ing, would cease to have any temptation to conquate to correct the evil."-(P. 356–359.)

Poaching will exist in some degree, let the laws be what they may; but the most certain method of checking the poacher seems to be by underselling him. If game can be lawfully sold, the quantity sent to market will be increased, the price lowered, and, with that, the profits and temptations of the poacher. Not only would the prices of the poacher be lowered, but we much doubt if he would find any sale at all. Licenses to sell game might be confined to real poulterers, and real occupiers of a certain portion of land. It might be rendered penal to purchase it from any but licensed persons; and in this way the facility of the lawful, and the danger of the unlawful trade, would either annihilate the poacher's trade, or reduce his prices so much, that it would be hardly worth his while to carry it on. What poulterer in London, or in any of the large towns, would deal with poachers, and expose himself to indictment for receiving stolen goods, when he might supply his customers at fair prices by dealing with the lawful proprietor of game? Opinion is of more power than law. Such conduct would soon become infamous; and every respectable tradesman would be shamed out of it. The consumer hisself would rather buy his game of a poulterer an increase of price, than pick it up clandestinely, and at a great risk, though a somewhat smaller price, from porters and boothkeepers. Give them a chance of getting it fairly, and they will not get it unfairly. At present, no one has the slightest shame at violating a law which every body feels to be absurd and unjust.

Poultry-houses are sometimes robbed;-but

tinue so, as they could fairly and lawfully procure game for their customers at a cheaper rate from the regular breeders. They would, as they now do for rabbits and wild-fowl, contract with persons to rear and preserve them for the regu. lar supply of their shops, which would be a much more commodious and satisfactory, and less hazardous way for them, than the irregular and dishonest and corrupting methods now pursued. It is not saying very much in favour of human nature to assert, that men in respectable stations of society had rather procure the same ends by honest than dishonest means. Thus would all the temptations to offend against the game laws, arising from the change of society, together with the long chain of moral and political mischiefs, at once disappear.

66

But then, in order to secure a sufficient breed of game for the supply of the market, in fair and open competition, it will be necessary to authorize a certain number of persons, likely to breed game for sale, to take and dispose of it when reared at their expense. For this purpose, I would suggest the propriety of permitting by law occupiers of land to take and kill game, for sale or otherwise, on their own occupations only, unless, (if tenants,) they are specifically prohibited by agreement with their landlord; reserving the game and the power of taking it to himself, (as is now frequently done in leases.) This permission should not, of course, operate during the current leases, unless by agreement. With this precaution, nothing could be fairer than such an enactment; for it is certainly at the expense of the occupier that the game is raised and maintained: and unless he receive an equivalent

for it, either by abatement of rent upon agreement, or by permission to take and dispose of it, he is certainly an injured man. Whereas it is perfectly just that the owner of the land should have the option either to increase his rent by leaving the disposal of his game to his tenant, or vice versû. Game would be held to be (as in fact it is) an outgoing from the land, like tithe and other burdens, and therefore to be considered in a bargain; and land would either be let game-free, or a special reservation of it made by agreement.

manor. If game could be bought, it would not be sent in presents:-barn-door fowls are never so sent, precisely for this reason.

The price of game would, under the system of laws of which we are speaking, be further lowered by the introduction of foreign game, the sale of which, at present prohibited, would tend very much to the preservation of English game by underselling the poacher. It would not be just, if it were possible, to confine any of the valuable productions of nature to the use of one class of men, and to prevent them from becoming the subject of barter, when the proprietor wished so to exchange them. It would be just as reasonable that the consumption of salmon should be confined to the proprietors of that sort of fishery-that the use of charr should be limited to the inhabitants of the lakes-that maritime Englishmen should alone eat oysters and lobsters as that every other class of the community than landowners should be prohibited from the acquisition of game.

"Moreover, since the breed of game must always depend upon the occupier of the land, who may, and frequently does, destroy every head of it, or prevent its coming to maturity, unless it is considered in his rent; the license for which I am now contending, by affording an inducement to preserve the breed in particular spots, would evidently have a considerable effect in increasing the stock of game in other parts, and in the country at large. There would be introduced a general system of protection It will be necessary, whenever the game laws depending upon individual interest, instead of a are revised, that some of the worst punishments general system of destruction. I have, therefore, now inflicted for an infringement of these laws very little doubt that the provision here recom- should be repealed. To transport a man for mended would, upon the whole, add facilities to seven years, on account of partridges, and to the amusements of the sportsman, rather than harass a poor wretched peasant in the Crown subtract from them. A sportsman without land Office, are very preposterous punishments for might also hire from the occupier of a large such offences; humanity revolts against themtract of land the privilege of shooting over it, they are grossly tyrannical-and it is disgracewhich would answer to the latter as well as ful that they should be suffered to remain on our sending his game to the market. In short, he statute books. But the most singular of all might in various ways get a fair return, to which abuses, is the new class of punishments which he is well entitled for the expense and trouble the squirarchy have themselves enacted against incurred in rearing and preserving that particu- depredations on game. The law says, that an lar species of stock upon his land.”—(P. 337— unqualified man who kills a pheasant, shall pay 339.) five pounds; but the squire says he shall be shot; There are sometimes 400 or 500 head of game-and accordingly he places a spring-gun in the killed in great manors on a single day. We path of the poacher, and does all he can to take think it highly probable the greater part of this away his life. The more humane and mitigated harvest (if the game laws were altered) would squire mangles him with traps; and the suprago to the poulterer, to purchase poultry or fish fine country gentleman only detains him in mafor the ensuing London season. Nobody is so chines, which prevent his escape, but do not poor and so distressed as men of very large for- lacerate their captive. Of the gross illegality of tunes, who are fond of making an unwise dis- such proceedings, there can be no reasonable play to the world; and if they had recourse to doubt. Their immorality and cruelty are equally these means of supplying game, it is impossible clear. If they are not put down by some declato suppose that the occupation of the poacher ratory law, it will be absolutely necessary that could be continued.-The smuggler can com- the judges, in their invaluable circuits of Oyer pete with the spirit merchant on account of the and Terminer, should leave two or three of his great duty imposed by the revenue; but where majesty's squires to a fate too vulgar and indeli there is no duty to be saved, the mere thief-cate to be alluded to in this journal. the man who brings the article to market with a halter around his neck-the man of whom it is disreputable and penal to buy-who hazards life, liberty and property, to procure the articles which he sells; such an adventurer can never be long the rival of him who honestly and fairly produces the articles in which he deals.-Fines, imprisonments, concealment, loss of character, are great deductions from the profits of any trade to which they attach, and great discouragement to its pursuit.

It is not the custom at present for gentlemen to sell their game; but the custom would soon begin, and public opinion soon change. It is not unusual for men of fortune to contract with their gardeners to supply their own table and to send the residue to market, or to sell their venison; and the same thing might be done with the

Men have certainly a clear right to defend their property; but then it must be by such means as the law allows:-their houses by pistols, their fields by actions for trespass, their game by information. There is an end of law, if every man is to measure out his punishment for his own wrong. Nor are we able to distinguish between the guilt of two persons,―the one of whom deliberately shoots a man whom he sees in his fields-the other of whom purposely places such instruments as he knows will shoot trespassers upon his fields. Better that it should be lawful to kill a trespasser face to face than to place engines which will kill him. The trespasser may be a child-a women-a son or friend. The spring-gun cannot accommodate itself to circumstances,-the squire or the game keeper may.

These, then, are our opinions respecting the country gentlemen within the boundaries of jusalterations in the game laws, which, as they now tice-and would enable the magistrate cheerfulstand, are perhaps the only system which could ly and conscientiously to execute laws, of the possibly render the possession of game so very moderation and justice of which he must be thoinsecure as it now is. We would give to every roughly convinced. To this conclusion, too, we man an absolute property in the game upon his have no doubt we shall come at the last. After land, with full power to kill-to permit others to many years of scutigeral folly-loaded prisons* kill-and to sell;-we would punish any viola--nightly battles-poachers tempted-and fami tion of that property by summary conviction, and pecuniary penalties-rising in value according to the number of offences. This would of course abolish all qualifications; and we sincerely believe it would lessen the profits of selling game illegally, so as very materially to lessen the number of poachers. It would make game as an article of food, accessible to all classes, without infringing the laws. It would limit the amusement of

lies ruined, these principles will finally prevail, and make law once more coincident with reason and justice.

In the course of the last year, no fewer than twelve hundred persons were committed for offences against the game; besides those who ran away from their families for the fear of cominitment. This is no slight quantity of misery

BOTANY BAY.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1819.]

THIS land of convicts and kangaroos is beginning to rise into a very fine and flourishing settlement:-And great indeed must be the natural resources, and splendid the endowments of that land that has been able to survive the system of neglect and oppression experienced from the mother country, and the series of ignorant and absurd governors that have been selected for the administration of its affairs. But mankind live and flourish not only in spite of storms and tempests, but (which could not have been anticipated previous to experience) in spite of colonial secretaries expressly paid to watch over their interests. The supineness and profligacy of public officers cannot always overcome the amazing energy with which human beings pursue their happiness, nor the sagacity with which they determine on the means by which that end is to be promoted. Be it our care, however, to record for the future inhabitants of Australasia, the political sufferings of their larcenous forefathers; and let them appreciate, as they ought, that energy which founded a mighty empire in spite of the afflicting blun

1. A Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales, and its dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land; with a particular Enumeration of the Advantages which these colonies offer for Emigration. and their Superiority in many respects over those possessed by the United States of America. By W. C. Wentworth, Esq., a Native of the Colony. Whittaker. London, 1819. 2. Letter to Viscount Sidmouth, Secretary of State for the Home Department, on the Transportation Laws, the State of the Hulks, and of the Colonies in New South Wales. By the Hon. Henry Grey Bennet, M. P. Ridgway. London,

1819.

3. O'Hara's History of New South Wales. Hatchard. London, 1818. † One and no small excuse for the misconduct of colonial secretaries is, the enormous quantity of business by which they are distracted. There should be two or three colonial secretaries instead of one: the office is dreadfully overweighed. The government of the colonies is comonly a series of blunders.

ders and marvellous cacœconomy of their government.

Botany Bay is situated in a fine climate, rather Asiatic than European,—with a great variety of temperature,-but favourable on the whole to health and life. It, conjointly with Van Diemen's Land, produces coal in great abundance, fossil salt, slate, lime, plumbago, potter's clay; iron; white, yellow and brilliant topazes; alum and copper. These are all the important fossil productions which have been hitherto discovered; but the epidermis of the country has hardly as yet been scratched; and it is most probable that the immense mountains which divide the eastern and western settlements, Bathurst and Sydney, must abound with every species of mineral wealth. The harbours are admirable; and the whole world, perhaps, cannot produce two such as those of Port Jackson and Derwent. The former of these is land-locked for fourteen miles in length, and of the most irregular form; its soundings are more than sufficient for the largest ships; and all the navies of the world might ride in safety within it. In the harbour of Derwent there is a road-stead forty-eight miles in length, completely landlocked;-varying in breadth from eight to two miles,-in depth from thirty to four fathoms,and affording the best anchorage the whole way

The mean heat, during the three summer months, December, January, and February, is about 80° at noon. The heat which such a degree of the thermometer would seem to indicate, is considerably tempered by the sea-breeze, which blows with considerable force from nine in the morning till seven in the evening. The three autumn months are March, April and May, in which the thermometer varies from 55° at night to 75° at noon. The three winter months are June, July, and August. During this inter