SPRING GUNS. (E. REVIEW, 1821.)

The Shooter's Guide. By J. B. Johnson. 12mo. Edwards and Knibb. 1819.

WHEN Lord Dacre (then Mr. Brand) brought into the House of Commons his bill for the amendment of the Game Laws, a system of greater mercy and humanity was in vain recommended to that popular branch of the Legislature. The interests of humanity, and the interests of the lord of the manor, were not, however, opposed to each other; nor any attempt made to deny the superior importance of the last. No such bold or alarming topics were agitated; but it was contended that, if laws were less ferocious, there would be more partridges -if the lower orders of mankind were not torn from their families and banished to Botany Bay, hares and pheasants would be increased in number, or, at least, not diminished. It is not, however, till after long experience, that mankind ever think of recurring to humane expedients for effecting their objects. The rulers who ride the people never think of coaxing and patting till they have worn out the lashes of their whips, and broken the rowels of their spurs. The legislators of the trigger replied, that two laws had lately passed which would answer their purpose of preserving game: the one, an act for transporting men found with arms in their hands for the purposes of killing game in the night; the other, an act for rendering the buyers of the game equally guilty with the seller, and for involving both in the same penalty. Three seasons have elapsed since the last of these laws was passed; and we appeal to the experience of all the great towns in England, whether the difficulty of procuring game is in the slightest degree increased?-whether hares, partridges, and pheasants are not purchased with as much facility as before the passing this act?—whe

ther the price of such unlawful commodities is even in the slightest degree increased? Let the Assize and Sessions' Calendars bear witness, whether the law for transporting poachers has not had the most direct tendency to encourage brutal assaults and ferocious murders. There is hardly now a jail-delivery in which some gamekeeper has not murdered a poacher-or some poacher a gamekeeper. If the question concerned the payment of five pounds, a poacher would hardly risk his life rather than be taken; but when he is to go to Botany Bay for seven years, he summons together his brother poachers they get brave from rum, numbers, and despair and a bloody battle ensues.

Another method by which it is attempted to defeat the depredations of the poacher is, by setting spring guns to murder any person who comes within their reach; and it is to this last new feature in the supposed Game Laws, to which, on the present occasion, we intend principally to confine our notice.

We utterly disclaim all hostility to the Game Laws in general. Game ought to belong to those who feed it. All the landowners in England are fairly entitled to all the game in England. These laws are constructed upon a basis of substantial justice; but there is a great deal of absurdity and tyranny mingled with them, and a perpetual and vehement desire on the part of the country gentlemen to push the provisions of these laws up to the highest point of tyrannical severity.

Is it lawful to put to death by a spring gun, or any other machine, an unqualified person trespassing upon your woods or fields in pursuit of game, and who has received due notice of your intention, and of the risk to which he is exposed?' This, we think, is stating the question as fairly as can be stated. We purposely exclude gardens, orchards, and all contiguity to the dwelling-house. We exclude, also, all felonious intention on the part of the deceased. The object of his expedition shall be proved to be game; and the notice he received of his danger shall be allowed to be as complete as possible. It must also be part of the case, that the spring

gun was placed there for the express purpose of defending the game, by killing or wounding the poacher, or spreading terror, or doing any thing that a reasonable man ought to know would happen from such a proceeding.

Suppose any gentleman were to give notice that all other persons must abstain from his manors; that he himself and his servants paraded the woods and fields with loaded pistols and blunderbusses, and would shoot any body who fired at a partridge; and suppose he were to keep his word, and shoot through the head some rash trespasser who defied this bravado, and was determined to have his sport:-is there any doubt that he would be guilty of murder? We suppose no resistance on the part of the trespasser; but that, the moment he passes the line of demarcation with his dogs and gun, he is shot dead by the proprietor of the land from behind a tree. If this is not murder, what is murder? We will make the case a little better for the homicide squire. It shall be night; the poacher, an unqualified person, steps over the line of demarcation with his nets and snares, and is instantly shot through the head by the pistol of the proprietor. We have no doubt that this would be murder that it ought to be considered as murder, and punished as murder. We think this so clear, that it would be a waste of time to argue it. There is no kind of resistance on the part of the deceased; no attempt to run away; he is not even challenged: but instantly shot dead by the proprietor of the wood, for no other crime than the intention of killing game unlawfully. We do not suppose that any man, possessed of the elements of law and common sense, would deny this to be a case of murder, let the previous notice to the deceased have been as perfect as it could be. It is true, a trespasser in a park may be killed; but then it is when he will not render himself to the keepers, upon a hue and cry to stand to the king's peace. But deer are property, game is not; and this power of slaying deer-stealers is by the 21st Edward I., de Malefactoribus in Parcis, and by 3d and 4th William & Mary, c. 10. So rioters may be killed, house-burners, ravishers, felons

refusing to be arrested, felons escaping, felons breaking gaol, men resisting a civil process may all be put to death. All these cases of justifiable homicide are laid down and admitted in our books. But who ever heard, that to pistol a poacher was justifiable homicide? It has long been decided, that it is unlawful to kill a dog who is pursuing game in a manor. To decide the contrary,' says Lord Ellenborough, 'would outrage reason and sense.' (Vere v. Lord Cawdor and King, 11 East, 386.) Pointers have always been treated by the legislature with great delicacy and consideration. To wish to be a dog, and to bay the moon,' is not quite so mad a wish as the poet thought it.

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If these things are so, what is the difference between the act of firing yourself, and placing an engine which does the same thing? In the one case, your hand pulls the trigger; in the other, it places the wire which communicates with the trigger, and causes the death of the trespasser. There is the same intention of slaying in both cases-there is precisely the same human agency in both cases; only the steps are rather more numerous in the latter case. As to the bad effects of allowing proprietors of game to put trespassers to death at once, or to set guns that will do it, we can have no hesitation in saying, that the first method, of giving the power of life and death to esquires, would be by far the most humane. For, as we have observed in a previous Essay on the Game Laws, a live armigeral spring gun would distinguish an accidental trespasser from a real poacher -a woman or a boy from a man-perhaps might spare a friend or an acquaintance-or a father of a family with ten children-or a small freeholder who voted for Administration. But this new rural artillery must destroy, without mercy and selection, every one who approaches it.

In the case of Ilot versus Wilks, Esq., the four judges, Abbot, Bailey, Holroyd, and Best, gave their opinions seriatim on points connected with this question. In this case, as reported in Chetwynd's edition of Burn's Justice, 1820, vol. ii. p. 500., Abbot C. J. observes as follows:

I cannot say that repeated and increasing acts of aggression may not reasonably call for increased means of defence and protection. I believe that many of the persons who cause engines of this description to be placed in their grounds, do not do so with an intention to injure any person, but really believe that the publication of notices will prevent any person from sustaining an injury; and that no person having the notice given him, will be weak and foolish enough to expose himself to the perilous consequences of his trespass. Many persons who place such engines in their grounds, do so for the purpose of preventing, by means of terror, injury to their property, rather than from any motive of doing malicious injury.'

'Increased means of defence and protection,' but increased (his Lordship should remember) from the payment of five pounds to instant death-and instant death inflicted, not by the arm of law, but by the arm of the proprietor;-could the Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench intend to say, that the impossibility of putting an end to poaching by other means would justify the infliction of death upon the offender? Is he so ignorant of the philosophy of punishing, as to imagine he has nothing to do but to give ten stripes instead of two, a hundred instead of ten, and a thousand, if a hundred will not do? to substitute the prison for pecuniary fines, and the gallows instead of the gaol? It is impossible so enlightened a Judge can forget, that the sympathies of mankind must be consulted; that it would be wrong to break a person upon the wheel for stealing a penny loaf, and that gradations in punishments must be carefully accommodated to gradations in crime; that if poaching is punished more than mankind in general think it ought to be punished, the fault will either escape with impunity, or the delinquent be driven to desperation; that if poaching and murder are punished equally, every poacher will be an assassin. Besides, too, if the principle is right in the unlimited and unqualified manner in which the Chief Justice puts it-if defence goes on increasing with aggression, the Legislature at least must determine upon their equal pace. If an act of Parliament made it a capital offence to poach upon a manor,